WOOD’S MANIFESTO: 


AN ADDRESS 

t 

TO THE PEOPLE OK KANSAS, 


By S. N.WOOD, 


Delivered at Herrington, Kansas, 
April 29 , 1891 . 



Every man in the state should read it. Members of the legislature 
should distribute large numbers of it, as it contains a 
complete history of the legislature. 


PRICES. 

Single Copies. 4 0 10 

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ADDRESS 

THE HAMILTON PRINTING COMPANY, 



TOPEKA, KANSAS. 























Entered according to act of Congress, by Thf. Hamilton Printing Company, 
in the year 1891, in the office of the Librarian of 
Congress, at Washington. 


WOOD’S MANIFESTO: 


AN ADDRESS 

TO THE PEOPLE OF KANSAS, 


By S. N.WOOD, 

•; 



Delivered at Herrington, Kansas, 
April 29,1891. 


Every man in the state should read it. Members of the legislature 
should distribute large numbers of it, as it contains a 
complete history of the legislature. 





TOPEKA: 

THE HAMILTON PRINTING COMPANY. 
1891. 


Z_ 






Mr. President , Ladies and Gentlemen: 

Permit me to say, in the commencement, that I am not here to abuse 
or vilify anyone ; abuse and vilification are not argument. I leave all 
this to our opponents. Those who cannot answer my arguments, how¬ 
ever, are at liberty to use their old arguments of abuse and vilification. I 
shall not abuse or vilify either of the old parties. I recognize what these 
parties were in their better days ; I know of their great achievements, 
and I would not take from them one of their laurels if I could. Old 
issues are of the past. Forget, if you can, that you have been Republic¬ 
ans or Democrats, and with me, for a short time, study politics or the 
science of government from a non-partisan standpoint. Thomas Jeffer¬ 
son was the first Democratic President. He was a man of the people. 
In his inaugural address, when he took the oath of office as President, 
speaking of what constituted a good government, he said : “ One thing 
more, gentlemen—a frugal government, one that shall restrain men 
from injuring each other, but shall leave them otherwise free to exercise 
their own pursuits of industry, and which shall not take from the mouth 
of labor the bread it has earned.” Abraham Lincoln, the first Repub¬ 
lican President, in his first annual message, declared that “ Labor deserves 
more consideration than capital.” Because, as he said, “Capital is the 
product of labor, and without labor it would never have existed.” Pro¬ 
fessor Amasa Walker, a writer of the old school, in his work entitled 
“ The Science of Wealth.” says that “ If there is more labor than there is 
capital to employ labor, that labor will be in competition and the price 
of labor will come down ; but if there is more capital than labor, that 
capital will go to waste. But if either must be the beggar it should be 
capital, and not labor, for the reason that capital is the savings of labor, 
and without labor it never would have existed.” 

If I vote a ticket simply because it is headed Republican or Demo¬ 
cratic, I am voting a prejudice, or an issue of the past. I am not tak¬ 
ing sides upon any issue of the present or the future. You know our 
interests are all the same. Yet here are two farmers, two merchants, 
two business men—one a Republican, the other a Democrat. Why 
is this? Their interests are identical. The people are now studying 
politics as they never studied it before; studying political economy 
from a non-partisan standpoint, which will eventually bring us to the 
same platform. The People’s party last fall built their platform upon 
the principles of Jefferson and Lincoln. Labor was its foundation. 
“ Lalior,” they said, “is the beginning of progress, the commencement of 
the world.” The result of the election, for the first time in our history, 
placed the house of representatives under the control of men opposed 
to the Republican party. The house had ninety-four People’s party 
members, twenty-four Republicans, and seven Democrats. The senate 
elected two years ago had thirty-seven Republicans, two People’s party, 
and one Democrat. The People’s party members of the house were 
men without legislative experience, but honest and sober. 1 never saw 
a better lot of men, or men who were more honest in purpose or anxious 
to do right and legislate to lighten the burdens of the people. In the 
house, among the Republican minority, were some of the best-trained 
politicians of the state — men of legislative experience and good parlia¬ 
mentarians. This gave them a great advantage over our new members, 
men, as I have said, without legislative experience. The Republicans 
did most of the talking, but the People’s party members did the voting. 


± 


Honest themselves, it was their misfortune to believe their opponents 
honest also. Should these men be re-elected and be returned as members 
of another legislature, which I hope each and every one will, they will 
be worth one hundred times as much to their constituents and the state 
as’they were last winter. Some of the Republicans in the house I could 
name, such as Webb, Douglas, Hopkins, Rice, and others, worked with 
the People’s party for the benefit of the people of the state. In the sen¬ 
ate, out of forty members, thirty-seven were the cream of the Republican 
party—men of ability and large legislative experience; men profound in 
the law. There was the venerable Thomas A. Osborn, twice Governor 
of our state, Minister to Chili and Brazil; “ Billy Buchan,” the chairman 
of the Republican state committee and the wheel-horse of the Repub¬ 
lican party ; Frank Gillett, the young Goliah of the southwest; Hon. II. 
B. Kelley, of McPherson, the ablest of them all (‘’will admit it him¬ 
self”), all candidates-at-large for Congress in 1892. In fact, the senate 
contained thirty-seven of the ablest men in the Republican party — men 
whose word in the party is law. Since our admission as a state in 1861, 
thirty years ago, this state has been unanimously Republican. For its 
legislation, whether good or bad, the Republican party must be held 
responsible. With it is the honor or the odium of our legislative history. 
In 1861 we had a ninety days’ session of the legislature, and put the 
whole machinery of the state government in operation. The entire 
appropriation that year was only $84,821. In 1871, ten years after, it 
reached $329,293.42. In 1861, with the best Governor Kansas ever had, I 
find that the appropriation for the Executive Department was $4,153. 
Of this the Governor got $2,000; his private secretary, $600 ; office rent, 
$200; Secret Service, $1,000; Adjutant-General’s Department, $600 ; Sec¬ 
retary of State Department, $2,500; Legislative Department, $48,578; 
Treasurer’s Department, $1,900 ; Attorney-General’s Department, $1,000 ; 
Auditor’s Department, $2,500; Superintendent Public Instruction, 
$1,700; Judiciary, $12,300; miscellaneous, $8,967.93. In 1889, the last two 
years of Republican rule, the appropriations were $2,657,511.56. The de¬ 
ficiencies amounted to over $350,000 more, making the total expenses of 
the state for the two fiscal years 1890 and 1891, in round numbers, over 
$3,100,000; over $3.50 per capita, compared with thirty-three cents per 
capita in 1861. Our population in 1861 was 160,000. Our population has 
increased nine times that of 1861, and our expenses for the year ending 
June 20,1889, were eighteen times that of 1861. It was reasonable to ex¬ 
pect that with an increase of population and taxable property that taxa¬ 
tion would be reduced, but the opposite has been the result. Population 
and taxable wealth have not increased, as will be seen, with our expenses. 
Our Republican law-makers seemed to have run wild. The governor’s 
department in 1865, the first year after the war, was $5,421.45. In 1890, 
the last year of Republican rule, it was $15,900. 

Fifty thousand dollars was asked for last winter for the World’s Fair 
at Chicago. One said that state pride demanded it, forgetting that 
Solomon had said: “ Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit 
before a fall.” Another said, it was “to advertise our state and induce 
immigration to come here.” If increased wealth and population brought 
a corresponding decrease in our taxes, there might be some argument 
in this scheme. But the history of our state is, the more population and 
wealth we have the greater our taxes. With $24,737,450 in taxable prop¬ 
erty in 1861, our expenses were 33 cents per capita, or, as I have said, 
amounting to $84,821. In 1889 our taxable property reached $348,000,000, 
and our expenses $1,600,000. Senator Buchan, in his manifesto, in ac¬ 
counting for the rapid increase of our expenses, said: “Since 1876, we 
find the growth of the state and the demands of the peiple have re¬ 
quired the establishment and maintenance of the following institutions 
and departments of the state government, which have been supported 


out of the moderate increase of appropriations for institutions and de¬ 
partments created since 1876: Asylum for Idiotic and Imbecile Youth 
at Winfield, Soldier’s Orphans’ Home at Atchison, State Soldiers’ Home 
at Dodge City, State Reformatory at Hutchinson, Industrial School for 
Girls at Beloit, Reform School for Boys at Topeka, Bureau of Labor Sta¬ 
tistics, Forestry Commission. State Board of Health, State House Com¬ 
mission, Oil Inspector, Mine Inspector, Live Stock Sanitary Commission, 
State Veterinarian, Supreme Court Commission, Board of Pardons, Silk 
Commission, Adjutant-General and National Guard, Railroad Commis¬ 
sion, Police Commissioners, State Board of Pharmacy, State Horticul¬ 
tural Society. The number of district judges in 1876, fifteen; number of 
district judges in 1890, thirty-seven.” 

The above looks like paternalism or nationalism run wild. It is a 
principle of taxation, as laid down by text writers, that it must be for a 
public purpose, and its benefits brought home to the whole people. Apply 
this test to some of the institutions and departments above named: 

The State Reformatory at Hutchinson stands there as a monument 
of the folly and extravagance of the Republican party. The Industrial 
School for Girls at Beloit, of course, is a high school for the girls at 
Beloit, and not for the state. Bureau of Labor Statistics is of no man¬ 
ner of use to any one, except to create more offices at the expense of the 
people. Oil Inspector, Mine Inspector, Live Stock Sanitary Commission, 
State Veterinarian, Board of Pardons, Silk Commission, Adjutant-Gen¬ 
eral and National Guard, Police Commissioners. State Board of Phar¬ 
macy and State Horticultural Society are all without any value or prac¬ 
tical benefit to the state except to answer the clamors of place hunters. 
We are told that in 1876 we had fifteen district judges, now thirty-seven. 
This increase of judges and courts ought to forever damn the party re¬ 
sponsible for the same. I know district judges in this state who have 
not three weeks of honest work in a year. Judge Crosier has a district 
consisting of Leavenworth, Jefferson, and Jackson counties, and is up 
with his work. Make twenty other districts with the same population, 
and you occupy the whole state, showing that we have sixteen judges, 
costing the state $40,000 a year; that the office should be abolished. They 
are all useless expenditures of the people’s money. Senator Buchan says 
“ the State Board of Agriculture reports cost $58,000 a year,” and asks 
“ if the farmers of the state would do without them.” In answer, let me 
say that not one farmer in one hundred ever sees one. They go to the 
politicians, and not to the farmers. The fact is, that the Agricultural 
Society, as well as their report, so far as the farmers are concerned, is 
an arrant humbug. Why did not Senator Buchan account for the fact 
that the senate employes, with only forty senators, cost over $20,000, 
while the house employes, with their 125 members, cost less than one- 
half ? Why was it that it cost $4,445 to enroll the senate bills, and only 
$3,015 the house bills, containing double the number of pages of sen¬ 
ate bills? 

The Normal School, at Emporia, is again assuming university airs, 
and should be confined to its legitimate work of training teachers for 
their work. It is not necessary that teachers should understand the 
“dead languages” to be able to teach in the common schools of Kansas. 
I learn from their report that students are now paid their traveling ex¬ 
penses by the state, in going to and from this institution. Next, I sup¬ 
pose, their board and washing will be paid. 

The Agricultural College, at Manhattan, should be confined to its legit¬ 
imate work. The agricultural farm should be an experimental station, 
with monthly reports of results sent to the whole people. The university 
is now spending $85,000 a year, about $170 for each student. Seventy- 
five thousand dollars a year is appropriated in a lump, to use as the re¬ 
gents please, and the result is a law department, where lawyers are being 


6 


made at the public expense. Next, we shall have a medical department; 
in fact, the Chancellor advised this in his last report. Why not a theo¬ 
logical department? The taxpayers of this State, 99 out of 100 of whose 
children must content themselves with a common-school education, will 
sooner or later tire of being taxed to teach the children of the rich the 
“dead languages,” or any other language except the English, or to edu¬ 
cate lawyers, doctors, and ministers. If the state would appropriate 
$1,000 a year to assist in a county high school in each county, on condi¬ 
tion that one is supported nine months in the year, would it not be better 
for the state, as it would then bring this higher education home to every 
family ? 

Our opponents seem desirous of instituting comparisons between the 
actions of the house and senate last winter. That the house did not 
accomplish what some expected of them, and what would have been ac¬ 
complished with a senate and executive acting in harmony with them, I 
admit. Appropriations had to be made, under existing laws; it was not 
in the power of one house to repeal these laws without the consent of 
the other. Salaries of all the public officers of the state were fixed by 
statute, and could not be changed except by legislative action of the two 
houses. It has been said that the reduction in appropriations were 
“principally of those who labor.” These were the only ones where re¬ 
ductions could be made without a change of the laws; and even with 
these reductions, I have not heard but the supply of men and women for 
these positions is fully equal to the demand. 

Let us compare the appropriations of last winter with the appropria¬ 
tions for the-year ending June 30th, 1889, which were $1,697,140.95; end¬ 
ing June 30th, 1890, $1,406,012.99, making a total in two years of $3,103,- 
153.94. Senator Buchan states that the appropriation for 1890 was 
$1,406,014.99; ending June 30th, 1891, $1,251,494.57. Total in these two 
years of $2,657,511.56. To this must be added a deficiency of over $350,- 
000, expenses incurred where no appropriations were made by the legis¬ 
lature two years ago, making the expenses for the last two years of Re¬ 
publican rule $3,007,511.56. The appropriation made by the legislature 
last winter, for the year ending June 30th, 1892, is $1,264,132.31; for the 
year ending June 30th, 1893, $1,125,497.52, a total of $2,389,631.83, a reduc¬ 
tion of $617,879.73. These statements are from the official records, and 
are true. I find by examination of the Auditor’s report that from June 
30th, 1888, to July 1st, 1890, there was paid out for public printing $227,- 
542.85. This was for two years. For the fiscal year ending June 30th, 
1889, in one year there was paid out $154,872.89; for the year ending 
June 30th, 1890, $72,669.96; for the year ending June 30th, 1891, $131,000; 
a total for the last two years of $203,669.96. The appropriation for the 
next two-years, by the late legislature, was $153,000; a saving in two years 
of $50,669.96. With the restrictions thrown around the w r ork, the state 
printing is not likely to exceed the appropriations; and yet, as Senator 
Buchan puts it, “the state is increasing in population and wealth.” The 
People’s party house, however, succeeded in saving many thousands to 
the taxpayers of the state. 

The People’s party last fall, in their platform, said: 

“ First,. We demand the abolition of national banks, and the substitution of legal ten¬ 
der treasury notes, in lieu of national bank notes, issued in sufficient volume to do the 
business of the country on a cash system, regulating the amount needed on a per capita 
basis, as the business of the country expands; and that all money issued by the Govern¬ 
ment shall be a legal tender in payment of all debts, both public and private. 

“ Second . We demand the free and unlimited coinage of silver. 

“Third. We demand that Congress shall pass such laws as shall effectually prevent 
the dealing in futures, in all agricultural and mechanical productions. 

“ Fourth. We demand the passage of laws prohibiting alien ownership of land. 

“Fifth. We demand that taxation, national or state, shall not be used to build up one 
interest or class at the expense of another. We demand that all revenues, national, state 
and county, shall be limited to the necessary expenses of the government, economically 
and honestly administered. 


7 


“Sixth. We demand that the means of communication and transportation shall be 
owned by and operated in the interests of the people, as is the United States postal 
system. 

'‘'Seventh. We demand such legislation as shall effectually prevent the extortion of 
usurious interest by any form or evasion or statutory provisions. 

"‘Eighth. We demand such legislation as will provide for a reasonable stay of execu- 
tion, m all cases, of foreclosures of mortgages on real estate, and a reasonable extension 
of time before the confirmation of sheriff’s sales. 

"Ninth. We demand such legislation as will effectually prevent the organization of 
trusts and combines for the purpose of speculation in any of the products of labor or the 
necessities of life, or the transportation of the same. 

"Tenth. We demand the adjustment of salaries of public officials to correspond with 
existing financial conditions, the wages paid to other forms of labor, and the prevailing 
prices of the products of labor. 

“ Eleventh. We demand the adoption of the Australian system of voting. 

"Twelfth. Labor is the beginning of progress, the formation of the world, and the 
laborer is entitled to a good living, and a fair share of the profits which result from his 
labor. The use of labor-saving machinery should shorten the hours of toil, and enure to 
the benefit of the employed equally with the employer.” 

Upon this platform the People’s party secured control of the house. 
We will see, in a moment, how well they carried into legislation their 
pledges. 

The Republicans, not to be outdone, also adopted a platform. It was 
made up largely with a history of the past, instead of issues of the 
present or future. I was glad to learn from it that the rebellion had 
been put down, slavery abolished, and a homestead law passed. This, I 
have no doubt, was new r s to many of the Republicans of the state, and 
they relied upon this dead issue. 

The Republican platform said: 

“ We favor such other legislation as may be necessary to insure an increase of the vol¬ 
ume of currency, adequate to the growing demand of our trade, the volume of such cur¬ 
rency to be regulated by the necessities of business. We are in favor of uniformity in text 
books in all the schools of the state, and demand such legislation as shall procure,'by con¬ 
tract or otherwise, the best standard books at the least possible cost. We are in favor of 
electing railroad commissioners by a vote of the people, and we demand of the next leg¬ 
islature that they confer upon the board of railroad commissioners ample power to regu¬ 
late freight and passenger rates. We are opposed to the system of free passes on rail¬ 
roads now in vogue in this state, bv reason of which every railroad company is expected, 
as a matter of courtesy, to compliment all state officers, members of the legislature, 
judges and otner public officers with free transportation over their respective lines, and 
we favor the suppression of this practice by proper legislation. We are in favor of legis¬ 
lation prohibiting the employment of children under the age of fourteen years in mines, 
factories, work-shops, or mercantile establishments. 

“ The next legislature should so amend the laws relating to foreclosure and sale of 
real estate, under mortgage contract, as shall secure to the mortgagor the privilege of 
redeeming such real estate at any time within twelve months from date of such foreclos¬ 
ure sale, by the payment of the judgment and of legal interest from date of sale to date 
of redemption.” 

Let us see how well the Republican senate fulfilled these pledges made 
to the people. I undertake to say that not one law was passed by the 
senate pledged to the people in this platform. There was as much in 
this platform calculated to injure the credit of the state as in that of the 
Peoples’. The fact is, there was nothing in either that should have in¬ 
jured our credit. The injury to the credit of the state was not in the 
platforms, but in the misrepresentations of the republican press of this 
state, who sent out false reports as to what the Alliance was going to do. 
The senate, in the start, undertook to exceed the house in reform legisla¬ 
tion in the interests of the people. They went back on their intentions, 
however; as I said, not one pledge of their platform was redeemed. I 
am aware that the Republican press has charged that the senate passed 
a stay of execution law for two years, and that the house had defeated 
it. Now, what are the facts? The house early in its session passed a 
new mortgage law, introduced by the judiciary committee, providing a 
cheap mode of foreclosure, to cost not exceeding $10, with an “equity 
of redemption” of two years, during which time the mortgagor was to 
retain possession. This law was made as fair as possible to the money 
loaners, in order to induce the holders of the millions of mortgages 
upon the farms of Kansas to extend the time, take new mortgages, and 


8 


thus enable our people, with an increased volume of currency, to pay 
their debts and avoid universal bankruptcy. This bill was passed 
almost unanimously in the house, went to the senate, was amended, dis¬ 
cussed and defeated, afterwards reconsidered, and all after the enacting 
clause stricken out and the following inserted : 

“No execution shall issue on any judgment for foreclosure until the expiration of two 
years from the time of rendition of judgment, in all cases wherein the costs of such action 
shall be paid within six months, and the interest on the judgment shall be paid semi¬ 
annually, and also the taxes; nothing in this act shall apply to proceedings in foreclosure 
of mortgages where the property has been abandoned nor to mortgages heretofore ex¬ 
ecuted .” 

What a relief it would have been, thus amended, to our mortgage- 
ridden people! It passed and was sent to the house. It was an insult 
to the intellgent farmers of the state. It was by the house referred to 
the judiciary committee, who in fifteen minutes reported it back with the 
following amendments (see Journal, March 11th, page 41): 

“ Mr. Speaker : The judiciary committee, to whom house bill No. 540, as amended 
by the senate, was this day referred, would respectfully report that your committee has 
considered the amendment transmitted to this house from the senate, and recommend 
that the same be amended as follows: 

“ First. Strike out in lines five and six, in section one, the words, ‘ In all cases where¬ 
in the costs of such action shall be paid within six months from the rendition of such 
judgment.’ 

“ Second. Strike out in line eleven of said section first the words, ‘ any part of costs 
remaining unpaid or.’ 

“ Third. Strike out in last line of said section one the words, ‘ Nor to mortgages here¬ 
tofore executed.” 

“And your committee further recommend that said senate amendments be further 
amended by adding thereto the following, to stand as section two: 

“Section 2. Any provisions in any mortgage, or other evidence of indebtedness, 
containing the words ‘ appraisement waived,’ or other equivalent terms, shall be null and 
void; and all laws and parts of laws in conflict therewith are hereby repealed: Provided , 
That where real property hereafter sold in any foreclosure proceeding shall be purchased 
by the plaintiff in the action, the sheriff shall be entitled to his fees, but he shall not be 
entitled to any commission on the amount bid at sale: And provided further, That when¬ 
ever the plaintiff in any foreclosure sale of real estate shall bid the full amount of the 
debt, interest and costs, the provisions of the law requiring the land to be sold, to bring 
two-thirds of its appraised value shall be deemed to be fully complied with. 

“And as so amended your committee recommend that said amendment be concurred 
in. J. S. DOOLITTLE, Chairman.” 

The report was adopted and the law was unanimously passed; it was 
returned to the senate, and died in the arms of that august bodv. Com¬ 
ment is unnecessary. With this bill died the last pledge made by the 
Republican party in that platform to the people. 

What is the record of that senate on the free coinage of silver, the 
increase of the volume of money, stay of execution, election of railroad 
commissioners by the people, prohibiting free passes, providing free 
school books to the state ? I repeat, every pledge made in that platform 
to the people was a dead letter to the state senate, showing that “plat¬ 
forms are made to go in on, and not to stand on,” or enter into the legis¬ 
lation of the state. The late Republican platform was made to deceive 
the people and catch votes. 

Here is a little book. Its title is “ The Report of the Senate Revision 
Committee.” Its compilation by a senate committee cost the state 
$5,400, besides the printing. It contains 228 pages. It seems to have 
been “ The substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not 
seen.” One-half its expense was clerk hire, without a clerk. The whole 
work could have been better done for $500. 

Just after the election last fall it was heralded all over the state that 
the bills that this committee had prepared and the reforms recom¬ 
mended by them were to “throw the Alliance in the shade.” It was to 
exceed anything dreamed of by the People’s party. Will someone tell 
me which, if any, of these bills became laws. Excuse me; I recollect the 
senate did pass a bill reducing fees and salaries of county officers. The 
house amended and passed it, and sent it back to the senate. The lobby 


9 


of county officers reached the senate at the same time the bill did, and 
the senate killed their own child by refusing to act on it; refusing to 
concur or non-concur in the house amendments, so it could go to a con¬ 
ference committee, the differences adjusted, and passed. 

I have read the editorial in the Eldorado Republican as to the dispo- 
sition of the bills reported by this “revision committee,” and find that 
bill Xo. 1, an act in relation to state offices, etc., passed the senate, was 
sent to the house, and March 6th the senate recalled it, and, of course, 
strangled the little infant. 

Bill No. 2 was an act to establish the salaries of the officers of both 
houses. 

Bill No. 3, providing for a State Board of Public Works, passed both 
houses. 

Bill No. 14, providing for a Fish Commissioner, passed the senate. It 
was killed in the house, and this expense was saved to the state. 

Bill No. 16, state agent at Washington on a large salary, passed the 
senate, was killed in the house, and this expense saved to the state. 

Bill No. 20 was the county officers’ bill, already alluded to, and died in 
the senate. 

Bills Nos. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 never 
reached the house, and died in the senate in the arms of their godfather, 
the “senate revision committee;” and thus ended the senate revision 
farce. 

The following senate bills passed the house : 

Relating to descents and distributions, amendatory to section 2609 
of the General Statutes of 1889, and repealing section 2609. 

Requiring moneys coming into the hands of county treasurers in cer¬ 
tain counties to be deposited in banks. 

Act amending section 4156, Statutes of 1889, relating to Code of Civil 
Procedure. 

For ttie continuance and maintenance of forestry stations. 

Act constituting eight hours a day’s work for all workingmen em¬ 
ployed by the state, county, city or township. 

To amend sections 6771 to 6775 of the General Statutes of 1889, relat¬ 
ing to stock. 

Act relating to the taxation of corporations. 

To provide revenue for the state. 

Providing for a Board of Public Works, defining its duties, and pro¬ 
viding penalties for the violation of this act, and repealing certain acts. 

Act to regulate warehouses, the inspection, weighing, grading and 
handling of grain. 

An act in regard to aliens, and to restrict their rights to acquire and 
hold real estate, and to provide for the disposition of lands now owned 
by non-resident aliens. 

Relating to the sale of real estate for delinquent taxes in such coun¬ 
ties as shall adopt the provisions of this act. 

Senate joint resolution, recommending the calling of a convention to 
revise, amend or change the constitution of the State of Kansas. 

Act prohibiting the editing, publishing, circulating, disseminating 
and selling of certain classes of newspapers and other publications. 

Act prohibiting combinations, to prevent competition among persons 
engaged in buying and selling live stock, and to provide penalties there¬ 
for. 

Not one of these laws was demanded in their platforms, excepting 
the alien ownership of land, which was as much a house as a senate bill; 
it was introduced in both houses at the same time. I challenge any sen¬ 
ator to tell me of any bill passed by the senate in the interest of the 
people which was not promptly acted upon by the house. The fact is, 
that senate bills were considered by the house in place of house bills on 


10 


the same subject. The bill providing for a Kansas exhibit at the Colum¬ 
bian Exposition in 1893 was senate bill 286. It passed the senate. The 
house amended it, so that the house, fresh from the people, would elect 
three commissioners and the senate two. This bill the senate defeated 
rather than allow the three parties of this state to be represented on the 
board. At the last moment the house passed a resolution urging the sen¬ 
ate to agree to these amendments, and save the bill and the honor of the 
state. This the senate refused to do, and they must take the responsi¬ 
bility. The bill was a good one, provided the Republicans could control 
the expenditure of the money, but if they could not control it, they had 
no use for the appropriation. It must be used for the benefit of the 
Republican party or not used at all. 

The following house bills were concurred in by the senate, and are 
now a part of the laws of the state: 

Act amending chapter 29 of the General Statutes of 1889, respecting 
probate courts. 

Regulating the manner of assessment of benefits and damages in 
taking private property for public use, and change of grades of any 
streets or alleys in any cities having over thirty thousand. 

Supplemental and amendatory of chapter 34 of the Laws of 1876, to 
provide for the assessment of taxes, 

To amend section 1, chapter 168, of the Laws of 1889, to provide for 
and regulate the enforcement of liens for labor and materials. 

To amend section 457, chapter 80, Statutes of 1886, relating to civil 
procedure. 

Apportioning the State of Kansas into senatorial and representative 
districts. 

Act to abolish survivorship in joint tenantcy. 

An act to amend an act respecting probate courts, being chapter 29 
of the General Statutes of 1889. 

An act providing for and regulating the diversion and appropriation, 
storage and distribution of water for industrial purposes within pre¬ 
scribed limits, and of the construction and maintenance and operation 
of works therefor; providing for the creation of irrigation districts, 
having certain powers ; fixing penalties for and assigning jurisdiction 
of offenses hereunder ; defining the powers and duties of certain public 
officers and for other purposes. 

Providing for the organization and regulation of banks. 

The following in addition to the above are some of the important 
bills passed by the house, which the senate refused to pass or even con¬ 
sider : 

Act prescribing penalties for accepting bribes. 

Act to abolish the corrupt use of money and corrupt acts at elections. 

Relating to continuances in district courts. 

Prohibiting railroad companies from employing or using private 
armed detective forces during railroad strikes or other disturbances 
arising between such companies and their employes, and providing pen¬ 
alties for the violation thereof. 

Relating to the redemption of lands sold for taxes, and amendatory 
to Tax Law of 1876, chapter 43, of Session Laws 1879. 

Act with reference to the verdict of juries, and to amend section 286 
of the Civil Procedure, being paragraph 4381 of the General Statutes of 
Kansas, 1889, doing away with special findings. 

To repeal chapter 114, Laws of 1887, providing that counties and in¬ 
corporated cities of the third class may subscribe stock in companies 
organized for the purpose of developing their natural resources. 

To repeal chapter 242, Session Laws 1889, relating to aid in building 
sugar mills. 

To protect counties, cities and townships against the illegal or fraud¬ 
ulent acts of their officers. 




11 


Act amendatory to the Civil Procedure in relation to the sale of real 
estate. This gave some relief to the people. 

Making railroad companies and others operating railroads liable for 
the obstruction of streets and. alleys in incorporated cities and towns 
and unincorporated villages. 

To amend section 7, chapter 150, Laws of 1889, and to regulate the 
practice of pharmacy, sale of poisons, and punishment for the adultera¬ 
tion of drugs, and creating a board of pharmacy in the state of Kansas. 

To prohibit subscription of stock or voting bonds for the construc¬ 
tion of railroads. 

Relating to railroads and certain liens thereon, and to determine the 
priority of such liens. 

To provide for the weekly payment of wages in lawful money of the 
United States. 

To amend sections 16 and 25, and chapter 131, Laws of 1885, entitled 
“An act to provide for the organization and control of mutual life insur¬ 
ance companies,” approved March 7, 1885, and to repeal said sections. 

To provide for printing and distributing ballots at the public expense 
and legal voting at state and city elections. 

Act to secure uniformity ?n listing and taxation of bonds, notes and 
mortgages and other securities of indebtedness. 

To amend section 8, chapter 93, Session Laws of 1871, being an act en¬ 
titled “An act to establish an insurance department in the state of Kan¬ 
sas, and to regulate the companies doing business therein.” 

To regulate the rate of interest to be charged for the use of money, 
prohibiting usury, and providing penalties for the violation thereof, and 
repealing chapter 164 of the Laws of 1889, aud approved March l, 1889. 

To provide for an inspector of hogs and cattle offered for sale at the 
stock yards located within the county of Wyandotte, delining his duties 
and tenure of office, and removing all restrictions in trade of hogs and 
cattle therein. 

Limiting the power of counties, townships and cities to borrow money 
and create indebtedness. 

Prohibiting private banks from doing business in any other than the 
individual name of the proprietors, and providing penalties for the vio¬ 
lation thereof. 

Relating to the liability of railroads from danger by fire, and amend¬ 
atory to section 165, chapter 23, General Statutes of 1889. 

Regulating crimes and punishments, and amendatory of section 107, 
chapter 31, General Statutes of 1886. 

Relating to the jurisdiction of justices of the peace, and amendatory 
to section 1 of chapter 83, General Statutes of 1889, being paragraph 5433 
therein. 

Prohibiting waiver of appraisement and stay laws, and laws of pro¬ 
cedure in suits for the collection of debts, and to repeal chapter 66 of the 
Session Laws of 1882. 

Relating to the levy of annual school taxes in cities of the first class, 
and to the issuance of bonds by boards of education of such cities for 
certain purposes. 

Prohibiting counties, townships and cities from voting aid except for 
building bridges, buildings and school-houses. 

An act entitled “An act to provide for the destruction of weeds along 
the right-of-way of railroad crossings for stock, and making railroads 
liable for stock killed or damaged by the same. 

To amend section 21, chapter 89, of the General Statutes of the State 
of Kansas. 

Act requiring all public and private municipal corporations existing 
under the laws of the state to pay their employes their salaries and wages 
weekly in lawful money, and providing a penalty for the violation of 
this act. 


12 


To destroy election returns after the expiration of five years. 

Conferring upon women the right to vote and hold office. 

Requiring the cutting and destroying of weeds in public highways on 
the rights-of-way of railroad companies. 

Act to abolish the State Board of Pardons. 

To remove the political disabilities of a class of persons named. 

An act to amend an act to establish a code of civil procedure. This 
would have reduced the work of the supreme court one-half. 

Act for the prevention of lotteries. 

Act amendatory to section 16 of the act passed at the session of 1868, 
providing for the maintenance and support of illegitimate children, 
printed as paragraph 3262 of the General Statutes of 1869. 

Relating to mortgages and other liens upon real estate, providing for 
the enforcement thereof, and regulating the right of redemption thereof. 

Authorizing the issuance of life certificates in the public schools by 
educational institutions chartered by the state. 

To punish drunkenness in public offices by forfeiture of office. 

Regulating the discharge of corporation employes, to prevent black¬ 
listing of railroad employes, and to provide penalties for the violation 
thereof. 

To provide joint rates over connecting lines of railroad in Kansas. 

To authorize county treasurers of counties having less than twenty- 
five thousand inhabitants to deposit public moneys in a bank, or banks, 
in the counties, and to repeal chapter 189 of the Laws of 1889. 

To provide for a uniform series of school books, by publication or 
otherwise, and for the distribution thereof; repealing any acts or por¬ 
tions thereof in conflict with this act. This bill, so manifestly just and 
proper, and in the interest of the people, the senate refused io pass. 

There were forty-five of these bills, all told. These bills all died in 
the senate. * 

The People’s party of the house voted for a bill appropriating 860,000 
for the relief of the sufferers by the severe drought of last year, which 
was defeated in the senate. We had not forgotten that in the drought 
in Eastern Kansas in 1860, several Northern legislatures appropriated 
large sums of money for the relief of the people of Eastern Kansas, but 
when we passed a bill in the house for the same purpose, for the benefit 
of our own people, the senate discovers that all such legislation is uncon¬ 
stitutional. No matter if the people west of the one hundredth meridian 
should starve to death, it was unconstitutional to help them; but 
850,000 for a big show or a big spree at Chicago two years hence was 
perfectly constitutional, if Republicans controlled the expenditures. 

The house, early in its present session, passed a concurrent resolution 
asking Congress to abolish the national banks and to substitute legal ten¬ 
der treasury notes, to be issued in sufficient volume for the business of 
the country on a cash basis, regulating the amount per capita as popula¬ 
tion and the business interests of the country increased or expanded, and 
that all money issued by the Government should be a full legal tender in 
payment of all debts, public and private, and it was hoped that this res¬ 
olution would be concurred in by the senate and sent to the L T nited 
States Senate and House as the united wish of the legislature and of the 
people of the State of Kansas ; but I regret to say that the senate, by a 
large majority, refused to concur in this resolution. 

The house also declared themselves in favor of the free and unlimited 
coinage of silver, and asked the House of Representatives at Washing¬ 
ton, largely Republican, to pass the senate bill in favor of free and un¬ 
limited coinage. This, I regret to say, was not done, and no relief has 
been afforded to the depressed business interests of the country bv the 
Republican Congress which expired on the 4th of March last. 

The Government has stopped the coinage of silver, or will absolutely 


13 


on the 1st of July next. Silver will go out of circulation, and silver 
certificates will take its place. These certificates are not a full legal ten¬ 
der. They will pass current as money with the people, but when debts 
are to be paid “ bondholders,” they will not pass. It’s gold for the bond¬ 
holders and the rich, silver certificates for the laboring people, with silver 
bullion mountain high idle in the treasury. 

This silver bill of 1890 raises and settles another question. We have 
been told that “ it’s a step in the right direction.” Perhaps it is, as it 
settles the power at least of the Government to receive on deposit one of 
the productions of the country in a Government “warehouse ” and issue 
money in exchange. If one production can be thus deposited and money 
issued, why not all productions? If the silver bullion of Colorado, why 
not the wheat of Kansas or the cotton of the South? It seems to me 
this settles the question of power, and leaves this whole question one 
of policy. With this passing notice I leave it. 

The house, after a careful examination, adopted virtually the Iowa 
rates of freights and fares on railroads, increasing them, however, nearly 
tw r enty per cent, over the Iowa railroad rates, with an average reduction 
of present Kansas rates of thirteen per cent. 'Ihis bill also provided 
that no more should be charged for a short haul than a long one. It also 
provided for the election of railroad commissioners by a direct vote of 
the people, with power to fix and change freight rates as conditions re¬ 
quired. I am sorry to say that the Republican senate failed to concur in 
the passage of this bill or any other upon the subject. 

The house also passed a law reducing fares on railroads to two and a 
half cents per mile, and prohibiting the issuing of free passes. The sen¬ 
ate refused to pass this law or any other on the subject. 

The house passed a law preventing the charging of illegal interest, 
and providing that those who contracted for over ten per cent, should 
forfeit both interest and principal. This law the senate refused to con¬ 
cur in or to pass any other upon the subject. 

The house passed laws for a stay of execution in cases of foreclosure 
of mortgages on real estate; also laws providing that sales should be set 
aside for inadequacy of price, and leaving this question to a jury rather 
than a court; also an equity of redemption law; but all legislation of 
this kind was defeated in the senate. 

We were told by senators that “ such laws would ruin our credit and 
drive capital from the state;” yet the State of Massachusetts, w r here cap¬ 
ital exists in abundance, and money is loaned cheaper on real estate than 
in any other state in the union, has an “ equity of redemption ” of three 
years. At common law the equity of redemption was twenty-one years. 
Massachusetts also has a law which makes the mortgagor and mortgagee 
joint owners of land for the purpose of taxation, and the value of the 
mortgage is deducted from the assessed value of the land and taxed to 
the holders of the mortgages. Iow r a has a stay law of two years. It ap¬ 
plied to mortgages in existence at the passage of the law, and the 
supreme courts of Iowa and the United States have decided that this law 
was constitutional. 

The Jews also had an equity of redemption. I find it recorded in the 
Book of Leviticus: 

“ The land shall not he sold forever; for the land is mine, saith the Lord. And in all 
the land of your possessions ye shall grant a redemption for the land. 

11 If thy brother be waxen poor, and hath sold away some of his possessions, and if any 
of his kin come to redeem it, then shall he redeem that which his brother sold. 

‘ And if the man have none to redeem it, and himself be able to redeem it, then let 
him count the years of the sale thereof, and restore the overplus unto the man to whom he 
sold it, that he may return unto his possession.” 

There was a genuine equity of redemption. The years were to be 
counted up for which the creditor had the possession and use of the 
land, and the “overplus” balance only had to be paid. But to continue: 

“ But if he be not able to restore it to him, then that which is sold shall remain in the 


14 


hand of him that hath bought it until the year of jubilee; and in the jubilee it shall go out, 
and lie shall return unto his possession. 

“ And if a man sell a dwelling house in a walled city, then he may redeem it within a 
whole year after it is sold; within a full year may he redeem it. 

“ But the houses of the villages which have no wall round about them shall be counted 
as the fields of the country; they may be redeemed, and they shall go out in the jubilee.” 

Moses, the great law-giver of Israel, wrote as lie was inspired by Om¬ 
nipotent power, by God himself. What a pity that the senate of the State 
of Kansas was not there to have killed or defeated this equity of redemp¬ 
tion law, as they did those passed by the house last winter. They would 
have told Moses and the great Omnipotent Jehovah that such legislation 
was calculated to injure the credit of the Jews and drive capital out of 
Jerusalem. The Kansas state senate evidently were not inspired or in 
favor of such legislation, whether it comes from the people’s house of. 
representatH es or the great Jehovah himself. 

The house passed a bill making the standard silver dollars and half 
dollars legal tender for all debts contracted in the state of Kansas, and 
declaring gold contracts or contracts payable in gold void, as the state 
has a right to do under the constitution of the United States. This law 
was bitterly opposed by the Republicans of the house, on the theory that 
it would ruin our credit and drive capital from the state. The senate re¬ 
fused to consider this law. 

The house passed a bill prohibiting the waiver of appraisement and 
stay laws in suits for the collection of debts, and to repeal chapter 06 of 
the Session Laws of 1872. The object of this law was to prevent the sale 
of property at less than two-thirds of its real value. This law, so mani¬ 
festly in the interest of the people and just to all parties, died in the judi¬ 
ciary committee of the senate. 

Senator Buchan complains of the investigation committees. These 
investigations are common to every legislature ; the investigation^ of the 
state house shows that thousands of dollars have been squandered 
through the dishonesty or ignorance of the State House Commission. 

Senator Buchan says the work on the state house has stopped, and 
that thousands of laborers are out of employment. I would like to ask ' 
Senator Buchan if it has come to this, that the state must provide work 
for the laboring people who have been reduced to want by our vicious 
financial legislation ? The senate joined with the house in investigating 
the Coifeyville dynamite explosion. They also appointed a senate com¬ 
mittee to investigate the state house after the house had commenced a 
full investigation. The house, it is true, investigated charges presented 
by Republicans against Judge Theodosius Botkin, and impeached him 
before the senate, where he must be tried. Had the house not done this, 
they would have shouldered the odium of keeping a drunken, corrupt 
judge on the bench. As it is, the senate must take that responsibility. 

Charges were preferred against Theodosius Botkin, Judge of the 
thirty-second judicial district, charging that he was an habitual drunk¬ 
ard, corrupt in office, and a blasphemer. These charges were preferred by 
Republicans, J.F. Vanvoorhis, chairman of the Republican central com¬ 
mittee of Seward county, heading the list. The house, as was its duty 
under the constitution, appointed a committee to investigate these 
charges. Witnesses were examined, and every charge made was abun¬ 
dantly proven. It was shown that Judge Botkin was not only an habit¬ 
ual drunkard, but was frequently drunk on the bench ; that the city of 
Springfield had been robbed of over $6,000 cash “ by order of court ” and 
that the tyranny practiced by him while on the bench was without a prec¬ 
edent since the days of Jeffries. The house, as a result, impeached him 
and appointed a board of managers to present articles of impeachment 
to the senate, which was done. The house, to save expense, then passed 
an act to abolish the thirty-second judicial district. This the senate re¬ 
fused to pass, thereby making themselves responsible for the expense of 
the impeachment proceedings, which could have been saved by abolish- 


15 


ing this useless district. Every Republican in the house, with one excep¬ 
tion, voted against the abolishment of this district. If this drunken, 
corrupt judge remains on the bench, the Republican senate must take the 
responsibility, and the odium will be with the Republican party. 

A revision committee, after the election last fall, with a great parade 
and a sudden awakening, had published to the people that they would re¬ 
duce the number of judicial districts to twenty-live instead of thirty- 
seven, and thus save twenty-live thousand dollars to the.state. When 
the house had passed a bill to abolish one, where there is not fifteen days’ 
honest work a year, the senate refused to concur, for no other reason 
than the admitted fact that a drunken Republican was on the bench. It 
will be seen that the Peoples’ party, if they expect to win the battle 
which they have been fighting, reduce taxation and interest, and save the 
homes of the people, must not only secure the house of representatives, 
but must secure the state senate, the governor and the executive depart¬ 
ments of the state. Then, and not till then, can the Peoples’ party be 
held responsible for any of the legislation of the state. To accomplish 
this, we must unite and work as one man. 

The Republican papers are harping upon the late utterances of Sena¬ 
tor In galls. yet he has been repeating what J. K. Hudson said in a speech 
at Erie, in Neosho county, July 23, 1873, and what Senator Ingalls him¬ 
self said in 1878, wiien the bill for the remonetizing of silver was pend¬ 
ing. On the 14tli day of February, 1878, in the United States Senate, 
Senator Ingalls used the following emphatic language: 

“If by any process all business were compelled to be transacted on a coin basis, and 
actual specie payments should be enforced, the whole civilized would be bankrupt before 
sunset. There is not enough coin in existence to meet one-thousandth part of the com¬ 
mercial obligations of mankind. Specie payments, as an actual fact, will never be re¬ 
sumed, neither in gold nor silver, in January, 1879, nor at any other date, here nor else¬ 
where. The pretense that they will be is either dishonest or delusive.” 

Again, in the conclusion of his speech, he says: 

“ We cannot disguise the truth that we are on the verge of an impending revolution. 
Old issues are dead. The people are arraying themselves on one side or the other of a por¬ 
tentous contest. On one side capital, formidably intrenched in privilege, arrogant from 
continued triumph, conservative, tenacious of old theories, demanding new concessions, en¬ 
riched by domestic levy and foreign commerce , and struggling to adjust all values to its 
own standard. On the other is labor , ashing for emoloyment, striving to develop domestic 
industries, battling with the forces of nature, and subduing the wilderness; labor, starving 
and sullen in the cities, resolutely determined to overthrow a system under which the rich 
grow richer and the poor are growing poorer; a system which gives a Vanderbilt the pos¬ 
session of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, and condemn the poor to a poverty which 
has no refuge from starvation but the grave. Our demands for justice have been met with 
indifference or disdain. The laborers of the country asking for employment are treated 
like impudent mendicants, begging for bread. The senator from Connecticut informs us 
that hundreds of millions of dollars are lying idle in New York and Hartford, which can 
be borrowed, for good security, at 4 per cent., and asks, with something like a sneer, how 
the coinage of a dollar worth ninety cents will benefit the poor unless they can give good 
security for their loans. The laborers of the West do not want to borrow; they want to 
earn. They do not wish to pay interest on other people’s capital, but to sell their labor, 
and, if possible, acquire some capital of their own. The producers of the West want a 
market m which the value of their products will not be consumed by the costs of trans¬ 
portation over railroads that pool their earnings, and combine to keep tlieir rates at 
a point where the carrier grows rich and the farmer grows poor. The senator from Wis¬ 
consin, in that admirable speech which left so little for others to say, declared that it was 
not a contest between the East and the West. Let us see. Against silver, as indicated by 
the vote on the Matthews resolution, are New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Maine, 
Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and Kliode Island; for it are every "Western state 
but Michigan, California and Oregon, ana every Southern state but Maryland and Dela¬ 
ware, and all these are divided. The senator from Wisconsin was right. It is not the 
East against the West. It is the East against the West and South combined. It is the 
corn and wheat and beef and cotton of the country against its bonds and its gold ; its pro¬ 
ductive industries against its accumulations. It is the men who own the public debt 
against those who are to pay it, if it is paid at all. If the bonds of this Government are 
ever paid they will be paid 'by the labor of the country, and not by the capital. They are 
exempt from taxation and bear none of the burdens of society. The alliance between the 
West and South upon all matters affecting their material welfare hereafter is inevitable. 
Their interests are mutual and identical. With the removal of the causes of political dis¬ 
sensions that have so long separated them they must coalesce, and united they will be in¬ 
vincible. The valleys of the Mississippi and their tributaries form an entirety that must 
have a homogeneous population, and a common destiny from the Yellowstone to the Gulf. 


16 


These great communities have been alienated by factions that have estranged them only to 
prey upon them , and to maintain political supremacy by their separation. Unfriendly leg¬ 
islation has imposed intolerable burdens on their energies; invidious discriminations 
have been made against their products; unjust tariffs have repressed their industries, 
while vast appropriations have been made to protect capital.” 

Ex-Senator Ingalls, in his belatant interim, recently said : 

“ Speaking of the Peoples’ party movement, I think it may be compared to the feeling 
of Republicanism which swept over the country from 1856 to 1860. This result might be 
more quickly reached could the West and South find a common ground on which to stand. 
The East and North have recognized this all along, and have adroitly prevented anv coal¬ 
ition. They know that anything in the South that endangers local government by the 
white element will be resisted, and that every other interest will be sacrificed to this end. 
They have managed to strengthen this feeling by an occasional menace. In the West sec- 
ti(>nal feeling has been resorted to with varying success until this year , when it signally 
failed.” 

Senator Ingalls for thirteen years had been at the front fanning sec¬ 
tional prejudices, menacing the South with negro rule on one hand and 
exciting the prejudices of the North on the other, so as to prevent a 
union of the West and South, but has now thrown up the sponge. 

The Republican platform last fall demanded the free coinage of silver, 
yet I notice the Republican press of the state are shouting for “ Blaine 
and reciprocity.” Have they forgotten the silver bill of 1878, which 
passed over President Hayes’ veto in the senate by a vote of 46 ayes to 
19 nays? Among the nays, and against “free coinage,” was James G. 
Blaine, of Maine. Blaine in 1873 had voted to demonetize silver. 

Senator Buchan complains that room was not provided last winter for 
the insane and the poor. Lord Salisbury, when asked the remedy for 
anarchy, said, “Remove the cause.” Did it never occur to Senator 
Buchan that we might to a large extent remove the cause of insanity? 
Recently an old citizen of Topeka, one who had been here from the 
start, finding his home sold from under him and he reduced to penury, 
in a temporary fit of insanity sent a bullet whizzing through his brain. 
I have just read of another, a life-long Republican of Lawrence, »for 
thirty-six years a resident of Kansas, unfortunate in financial matters, 
with starvation, want, and penury staring him and his family in the 
face, who became a raving maniac. Kansas taxed with a mortgage 
debt of $150,000,000, chattel mortgages of $50,000,000 more, with $14,- 
000,000 drain from our state every year to pay interest; thousands every 
day losing their homes; men driven to insanity and crime, women to 
prostitution, children over the hills to the poor-house; yet Senator 
Buchan’s and the Republican remedy is “more poor-houses, more jails, 
more asylums, more magdalene hospitals.” It has never occurred to 
them to remove the cause. 

I need hardly tell this audience that labor is the only thing that pro¬ 
duces wealth; others may accumulate, but labor produces all. Labor 
supports the family of the man who labors, and also the family of the 
man who does not. The cause of the condition of the laboring people, 
the oppressed condition of* the middle classes of this country, and of 
agriculture and all the industries, is the vicious class legislation since 
the war. Take, if you will, two periods in our history. 

First, from 1850 to 1860. ten years of profound peace, the marvelous 
increase of wealth during this period exceeds that of any other period 
of our history. The taxable wealth of this country in 1850 was $6,024 - 
666,909. In 1860 it was $12,081,560,005, having more than doubled in 
ten years. Now take another ten years of profound peace, from 1870 to 
1880. The taxable property in 1870 was $14,178,986,722. In 1880 it was 
$16,902,993,543, an increase in this ten years of less than $3,000,000,000 
The estimated value of property in 1850 was $7,135,780,228. In 1860 it 
was $16,153,616,016. In 1870 it was $31,068,518,507. In 1880 it was $43- 
642,000,000. In 1890 it was $62,000,000,000. It seems that the marvelous 
increase of wealth is not of that kind that gets on the tax rolls. Think 
of it. An increase of taxable property in ten years, 1850 to 1860, of over 


17 


six billion, and from 1860 to 1890, a period of thirty years, the increase is 
no more. In fact, the increase was only fifty per cent, in thirty years, 
compared to 100 per cent, in ten years. It was our boast before the war, 
that we were a nation of small property owners, that every family owned 
their home. During this period there were no mortgages on our farms, 
the people were out of debt, we were building factories and shops as we 
had never built them before. How was it from 1870 to 1880? The whole 
property was passing rapidly into the hands of the few; our farms were 
plastered all over with mortgages; prices were depreciating; our facto¬ 
ries had closed their doors; our shops were idle, and a million of tramps 
in 1878 filled the land. Crime increased as it had never increased before; 
our jails, penitentiaries, poor-houses and asylums were filled ; civiliza¬ 
tion was going backward and downward towards barbarism and the 
dark ages; ministers would get down on their knees and bemoan the low 
condition of human society, and then get up and vote to make it worse. 

It must not be forgotten that the ten years before the war was the low 
tariff period, while the ten years after the war was not only the high 
protective tariff period, but we had a “ war tariff.” This shows that we 
can have good times under a low tariff, and hard times under a high 
tariff. 

I was amused at a protective tariff speech which Mr. Horr, of Michi¬ 
gan, made in Topeka last spring. He said that “the effect of a protective 
tariff was to stimulate production, and cause competition, and thus re¬ 
duce prices.” Yet when the tariff is taken off of sugar, the price imme¬ 
diately fell to a sum equal to the tariff reduction. In a paper recently I 
read the following: “ Twenty-five thousand tons of Americati steel rails 
have lately been sold in Mexico for less than the same could have been 
obtained from the English manufacturers.” Thus does protection oper¬ 
ate to close the markets of the world against American products, and we 
are compelled to pay $11.00 a ton more for steel rails than our own fac¬ 
tories sell the same rails for to a foreign government or people. We, of 
course, make up the difference in railroad building in this country by 
voting municipal bonds, which remain a permanent tax on the people. 

Just how a reduction in prices is going to protect American labor Mr. 
Horr did not inform us. I have always understood the theory of protec¬ 
tion to be to produce a scarcity so as to keep prices up. According to 
the theory of Mr. Horr, it must be the tariff on wheat and other agricul¬ 
tural productions that has stimulated its production, and reduced the 
price. There is now a tariff on eggs, and of course this Will stimulate 
every old hen in the country to lay more eggs, and thus reduce the price. 
David A. Wells, in a recent work, says: “The steam power of the world 
is equal to forty million of horse power, or the labor of one thousand mil¬ 
lions of men; that half of this steam power is in the United States, doing 
the work of five hundred million men, more than seven times our entire 
population. It is this labor being done by steam that we are protecting. 
This aggregated wealth invested in steam gets the benefit; the real 
laborers of this country are not benefited, as our past history and price 
of labor proves. 

The statistics of trade show that in fifteen years we have exported 
from the United States to Europe $1,530,000,000, including productions 
and money, more than we have imported. Does this make us that much 
richer or that much poorer? If richer, then Ireland ought to be the 
richest nation in the world, as for forty years she has exported $100,000,- 
000 a year more than she has imported. In fifteen years England im¬ 
ported seven billion more than she exported, making that little island 
a dumping ground for the wealth of the world. All will admit, I think, 
that no more money should be collected for taxes on tariff than is nec¬ 
essary for the needs of the country. We have no right to tax one man 
to build up another man’s business. A tariff is an indirect tax, and its 
-2 


18 


tendency is to raise the price of articles imported. If not, why do the 
great manufacturers protest against the reduction of the tariff? It is 
true that with such articles as we export a tariff will not raise the price; 
hence a tariff on wheat, cattle, hogs, and such things as the farmer 
raises to sell, and which are not imported, a tariff, high or low, would not 
affect the price. If a tariff, however, on such articles as we buy in for¬ 
eign countries and import, does not raise the price, it is no protection. 
We are caught and seduced with the cry of “protection to American 
labor,” when the truth is, labor is not protected, but the enhanced price 
goes into the pockets of the manufacturer. We are clamoring for a deep 
water harbor at Galveston, Texas, to cheapen transportation so as to 
reduce prices on what we import and buy, and enhance prices on what 
we raise and sell. Whilst I am in favor of this deep harbor, I cannot 
comprehend how men can advocate it and then want to restrict trade by 
law. All restrictions on trade and commerce must be injurious to all 
parties concerned. President Garfield once said that he was “ in favor 
of that kind of protection that would result in ultimate free trade.” 
Even a tariff for revenue is not a just system of taxation, as we are taxed, 
not on our incomes and abilities to pay, but upon what we eat and wear. 
It is a tax on the poor for the benefit of the rich — a man with a wife 
and nine children paying ten times as much as a rich man with no wife 
or children. We had a high or Whig tariff in 1842, after the election of 
Harrison and Tyler. This tariff was reduced one-half in 1846, under 
Polk, and again twenty per cent, in 1857, and continued low until 1860. 
It has been, a high tariff ever since. Where is the home market it has 
given us? What effect has it had on the price of labor? These are 
serious questions and should be studied from a “non-partisan stand¬ 
point.” In 1845, the last year of that high tariff, the lowest price of mess 
pork in New York was $9.25, the highest was $14.12. Iii 1847, the next 
year after the tariff reduction, the lowest price was $10.25, the highest 
was $16.00. Wheat in 1845 was 85 cents, the lowest, to $1.40, the highest. 
In 1847 the lowest price was $1.05, the highest $1.90; and it ranged from 
93 cents to $1.95 during that whole low tariff period, sinking below a 
dollar only once in thirteen years. Wool in 1845 was 20 cents, the lowest, 
to 38 cents, the highest, per pound, in the New York market. In 1847 
the price was 24 cents, the lowest, to 34 cents, the highest. In 1857, with 
no tariff on wool, the price went up to 45 cents per pound. The lowest 
that year was 34 cents per pound. This may seem strange, but the reason 
is obvious. The English factories buv our wool at precisely the same 
prices the American factories do. We send ten thousand pounds of 
wool to the New York market; five thousand goes to English factories, 
five thousand to Massachusetts factories. We get the same price for each] ' 
The English get wool from Australia and South America to mix with 
our wool to make the best cloths, duty free, while our factories are 
charged ten to twenty cents per pound by our own Government on each 
pound imported in the shape of tariff duties. This depresses the wool 
industries in this country. We cannot compete with the English facto¬ 
ries with their cheaper raw material. Half of our factories are now idle 
and our own wool does not command the price it would could we get 
cheap wool to mix with it from Australia and South America, duty free 
As I said, wheat but twice from 1846 to 1860, under a low tariff went 
as low in New York as $1.00 per bushel. This was in 1848, when it went 
as low as 95 cents, and was as high the same year as $1.40, and in 1857 
when it went as low as 93 cents, ancl was as high as $1.20. But under a 
high tariff, levied, we are told, “to give us a home market,” wheat in 
1874 was 93 cents ; 1875, 92 cents ; 1876. 84 cents ; 1878, 83 cents ; 1883 95 
cents ; 1884, 74 cents ; 1885, 68 cents ; 1886, 83 cents. And this has been 
the range of prices to the present. Corn, the last year of high or Whig 
tariff (1845) was as low as 45 cents and as high as 85 cents in New York. 


19 


In 1847, the first year of a tariff reduced one-half, corn was as low only 
as 64 cents, and went as high in New York as §$1.10 per bushel. Corn, 
from 1847, under the low tariff, was in 1848, 52 to 78 cents ; 1847, 57 to 70 
cents ; 1850, 55 to 72 cents. The lowest price was in 1856, when it went 
down to 48 cents, but was as high as 74 cents the same year. Under our 
present high tariff it went as low as 38 cents in 1876^ and the highest 
figure was 49 cents, and the price has continued low ever since. Flour, 
in 1845, was $4.31 per barrel, and as high as S7.0J. In 1847, under the 
low tariff, it went up; the lowest price was $5.50, highest $8.25. From 
that time until 1860, the lowest price reached was in 1858, when it went as 
low as $3.75 per barrel, but was as high as $5.25 per barrel the same year. 
In 1886, the same flour, under a high tariff,»was as low as $2.65, and the 
highest figure only $3.50. In 1845, the last year of the high tariff of 1842, 
we exported only $336,779.00 worth of wheat, and $598,598.00 of flour. 
Under the stimulation given to trade and commerce by the reduction of 
the tariff one-half in 1846, the next year we exported $6,049,350 of wheat, 
and $26,133,911 worth of flour. In 1857, when the tariff was again 
reduced, the export of wheat reached $22,240,857, and of Hour $25,882,316. 
In 1845, our export of corn was $411,741.00 only. In 1847 it was $14,395,- 
212.00. It seems to me that these figures ought to satisfy every farmer 
or any sensible man. 

The assessed value of taxable property of the United States in 1850, 
as I have said, was $6,024,666,909. In 1860, after ten years of profound 
peace and ten years of low tariff, our national taxable wealth increased 
to $12,084,560,005. You see more than doubling. In 1870, including -the 
war, with an inflated currency, it was only $14,178,886,732, whilst in 1880, 
another ten years of peace, it reached only $16,902,993,543. 1 have not 
before me the manufacturing statistics of 1850 to 1860, but if you will 
examine the census of 1850 and 1860, you will find that we doubled the 
number of factories, doubled the capital employed, also the number of 
laborers, and that under a low tariff. In 1870 to 1880,1 find in a table 
before me some curious statistics, considering the special protection under 
the high tariff of 1870 to 1880. For instance, we had 2,078 agricultural 
implement factories in 1870, and only 1,943 in 1880, a loss of 135 factories. 
Ready-made clothing factories in 1870, 9,705 ; in 1880,6,728, a loss of 2,977 
factories. Iron and steel factories in 1870, 3,939; in 1880,1,519, a loss of 
2,420 factories. Woolen goods in 1870,1,938; in 1880,1,990, an increase in 
ten years of 52. Of worsted goods in 1870,102; in 1880, 76, a loss of 26 fac¬ 
tories. Even of cotton goods in 1870, we had 969 factories, and in 1880 
only 1,005, showing that in ten years we built but 46 cotton factories. 

I am indebted to Spofford’s American Almanac for these statistics. 
He is the Librarian of Congress, and a strong Republican. Since 1862 over 
296,000,000 acres of public lands have been given to railways, enough to 
make four states as large as Kansas. What is the remedy for all our ills ? 
I answer, reduce the tariff, tax the luxuries, not the necessaries of life; 
lower the duties, for instance, on clothing, raise them on diamonds. We 
want a tariff in the interests of labor instead of capital and corporations 
and monopolies, as at present. Reduce the, burdens of the people as 
much as possible, increase the volume of money to at least $50.00 per 
capita, and not over ten per cent, on wealth, then increase it as popula¬ 
tion, wealth, and business increase, and make it as stable as the metals, 
which must always be a question of chance. Let the Government own 
and control the railroads and other transportation lines, and operate 
them in the interest of the people, and not place the carrying of our 
products to market at the mercy of corporations. We clamor for cheap 
transportation in order to reduce prices, yet we restrict trade and com¬ 
merce by law. If the theory of protection be the true one we ought to 
fill our harbors with stones and our rivers with snags. We spend millions 
to remove the bars and snags from our rivers, when in truth and in fact 


20 


the snags in the Mississippi are the only protection we have against the 
cheap sugar of Louisiana. What difference would it make to the sugar 
producer of Louisiana whether the Government or the steamships charge 
two or three cents more a pound on imported sugar? 

Blaine’s remedy is reciprocity with the South American republics, 
and at once the high protectionists of yesterday run wild on reciproc¬ 
ity. The products of South America are principally cattle, sheep, hides, 
and wool. These New England wants in exchange for the products of 
her factories. This is the “home market” promised the West by the ad¬ 
vocates of protection; but when delegates from the Government of 
Canada come to Washington to negotiate reciprocity between Canada 
and the United States, Harrison and Blaine send them home. “No reci¬ 
procity is wanted with Canada.” Keciprocity, as I understand it, is, 
“ We will admit the products of your country free if you will ours.” Just 
how this differs from Democratic “ free trade ” I cannot imagine. Some 
one has stated, “ It is free trade on ice.” The knights of reciprocity must 
be free traders in disguise. It is simply a “ rose by another name.” 

But, gentlemen, we have prospered under a low tariff and we have 
prospered under a high tariff; hence the shrinkage in values and the de¬ 
pression in business and agriculture all over this country cannot be the 
tariff. We must find some other cause. 

We boast of our great and rich country. On the political stump and. 
in the party press we are told how our country has increased in not only 
power but Tvealth. Yet, the facts are, that this great increase is in rail¬ 
roads, banks and great corporations; that fifteen thousand individuals 
and firms own one-half of the wealth of the whole country; that farms 
everywhere are heavily mortgaged; that agriculture is depressed, and the 
people are rapidly becoming millionaires on the one hand and paupers on 
the other; that with all our boasted increase of wealth, which has all been 
produced by labor, the laboring people on the farm and in the shop are in 
a worse condition than they were twenty-five years ago. The cen¬ 
sus just taken shows over two millions of families in this great and rich 
country without homes. Twelve millions of paupers !! We have placed 
the power to make money and fix its value in the hands of corporations, 
which enables them to put up or put down prices by making money 
scarce or plenty. We loan two hundred millions to the national banks 
at half of one per cent., and give them the power to absorb the whole 
wealth of the people in interest. We have placed the transportation of 
the products of the soil in the hands of corporations. The transmission 
of intelligence is also in the hands of corporations; and thus, you see, 
the people are at the mercy of these corporations; and, like idiots , we 
wonder at the condition of the people. 

General George Washington, when elected commander-in-chief of the 
colonial armies in June, 1776, stipulated that if he accepted the trust, it 
must be without pay. When the war was over and the independence’of 
the colonies was acknowledged, the people would have made Washing¬ 
ton king of the new nation. They were ready to heap any emoluments 
on the successful General. Yet, Washington refused them all, bade his 
officers and men adieu, retired to Annapolis where Congress was in ses¬ 
sion, resigned his commission, and at once returned to private life, to his 
farm at Mt. Vernon. He sought no pension, no promotions; did not ask 
even to retire on half pay. When unanimously elected President in 1788 
he accepted the position, again stipulating to serve his country without a 
salary or any reward. When he retired, at the close of his second term 
refusing a re-election, he at once returned to his farm and the pursuits 
of private life. With him , office was a sacred trust, exercised not for 
private gain, but to promote the public good. Washington left no chil¬ 
dren, hence he is called “the father of his country.” Washington in fact 
left no descendants, politically speaking; no one since Washington has. 


21 


voluntarily returned to private life without clamoring for a pension or 
half pay.” We have already created a pensioned aristocracy in this 
country, civil and military. Instead of studying the simplicity of the 
father, we are aping the monarchies of the old world. 

Jefferson, when elected President, travelled from Monticello, his resi¬ 
dence, to Washington, on horseback. What President would now think 
of traveling to Washington without a Pullman vestibule car? 

^ The receipts of the United States Treasury in 1796, the last year of 
Washington’s administration, was $8,607,821.00. The expenditures were 
only $5,790,650.00, or about $1.50 per capita. The receipts of the Treasury 
in 1888 were $371,403,277.00. The expenditures, excluding interest on the 
public debt, were $267,932,180.00, or about $5.00 per capita. The appro¬ 
priation in the last Congress reached one billion, or over $15.00 for each 
man, woman, and child in the country. 

Before the war we had no poor men and few rich ones. We could 
have counted all our millionaires on the fingers of one hand and the 
paupers on the other. To-day we are a nation of millionaires on the one 
hand and paupers on the other. In the number of rich men we now ex¬ 
ceed the old world. These men in many, in fact in most instances, have 
been made rich by class legislation, by which the rich have been made 
richer and the poor poorer. Public offices and public trusts are to-day 
bought and sold with as little hesitancy as we used to buy hogs and 
sheep. The prices of everything we product are controlled by trusts, that 
reduce and increase the prices of everything we consume. We go to 
the election and vote for this ticket because it is headed “Republican,” 
or the other because it is headed “ Democratic,” and whichever is elected 
produces no change in this class legislation. One million of men are idle, 
and labor is in competition. The price of labor is not only low, but is 
continually going lower. In our political frenzy we have not time to 
stop and study the cause. “ Opposition to all monopoly of money, lands 
or transportation, equal rights, equal burdens, equal taxation, and equal 
benefits to all, with special privileges to none,” was the touchstone of 
Jeffersonian Democracy. The Declaration of Independence teaches that 
governments are intended for the benefit of the people, not for the bene¬ 
fit of the few against the many; that “all governments derive their just 
powders from the consent of the governed; that those who have to obey 
laws should have a voice in making them. In a word, that all men and 
all women were created free and equal, and endowed by the Creator with 
the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 

Daniel Webster, the great Whig leader, once in the United States Sen¬ 
ate said: “The great interest of the country, the producing cause of all 
its prosperity, is labor! labor! labor! The Government was made to en¬ 
courage and protect this industry and give it security. To this very end, 
with this object in view, power was given to Congress over the currency 
of the country.” President Lincoln, in his annual message to Congress, 
in 1861, said that “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital 
is only the product of labor, and could never have existed without labor, 
and therefore labor deserves a much higher consideration.” It follows, 
if this country is to be built up and prosper, we must protect labor and the 
laboring people. When labor suffers, all must suffer. By the help of 
labor-saving machinery one man can now do the work that ten men used 
to do. Labor, therefore, should share some of the benefits; either work 
less hours, and have more time for reading and recreation, or receive 
much higher wages, or both. As it now is, those who work the hardest 
are paid the smallest wages; those who do not work at all, get nearly all. 
There should be no unnecessary restrictions on trade and commerce. 

What Kansas needs is the free markets of the world, in which to buy 
and sell. We should have low rates of transportation, and cease erecting 
barriers by bad laws. I do not comprehend how it benefits labor to 


22 


protect corporations and monopolies, and then vote to fill our country 
with the slave labor of China and the old world. Revenues to support 
the Government, experience has demonstrated, can be collected from a 
tariff on imports. But such a tariff should be adjusted in the interests 
of the great producing classes of the country; in the interests of labor 
rather than the rich manufacturer. All will concede that no more money 
(or tax) should be collected from any source than enough to pay the ex¬ 
penses of the Government, economically administered. One of the great 
needs of our people is more money. The great lawgiver of Israel, three 
thousand years ago, said: “Money answereth all things.” Napoleon, 
when asked what were the three most essential requisites in Avar, said: 
‘‘The first is money, the second is money, and the third is still more 
money.” This is as true in peace as in war. If money is scarce, trade 
languishes and our industries are paralyzed; the price of labor comes 
down, and thousands, if not millions, are out of employment. At such 
times, what money there is flees to the great money centers, and goes out 
of circulation like a congestive chill when the blood leaves the extremi¬ 
ties and goes to the heart. If, on the other hand, the volume of money is 
increased, trade is stimulated, our industries leap forward, and all the 
idle laborers are induced to go to Avork; the price of labor increases. 
The most prosperous period in our history Avas just after the close of the 
Avar, when the soldiers had been paid off and returned home, and the 
money with Avhich they Avere' paid Avent into general circulation. 

The population in 1860 Avas 31,443.321. In 1870 it was 38,358,371—say 
35,000,000 at the close of the war. in 1866. At that time there Avas in circu¬ 
lation moneys as folloAvs: Demand notes, $272,162; greenbacks, $400,619,- 
206; temporary loans, $120,176,196; one and two year treasury notes, $3,- 
454,230; certificates of indebtedness, $26,391,000; postal currency, $7,030,- 
700; compound interest treasury notes, $159,012,140; fractional currency, 
$20,040,176; 7-30 treasury notes, August and September, 1864, $139,301,700; 
7-30 treasury notes, 1864-5, $806,251,550; making a total of $1,682,549,060. 
There was outstanding at that time, state bank circulation, $19,996,163; 
national bank notes, $281,479,608, making $301,475,771, Avhich gives the 
sum of all kinds of paper money then in circulation at $1,984,024,831, ex¬ 
clusive of gold and silver. Adding the gold and silver then in circulation, 
and Ave had at least $57 per capita, or over $2,000,000,000. 

There is some difference of opinion as to the amount of money iioav 
actually in circulation. Senator Plumb estimates it at less than $10 per 
capita. The treasury department estimates the amount of money of all 
kinds now in this country at $1,500,000,000; the population at 64,000,000. 
This is $25 per capita, bat it is less than half the money in circulation 
Avhen we had but 35,000,000 population. We have almost doubled the 
population since 1866, and shrunk the volume of money almost one-half, 
but this money is not in circulation. $751,000,000 is idle in the treasury 
and Government depositories. Good banking requires 25 to 30 per cent, 
of deposits to be kept on hand to pay depositors. I have before me a 
table showing the condition of the .national and other bauks January 
30th, 1888. There were 3,049 national banks, Avith a capital of $578,500,000. 
They had on deposit, or rather due depositors, $1,274,700,000, being more 
than double their capital stock. If twenty-five per cent, of this Avas in 
the bank vaults it Avas not in circulation; this would be $318,675 000. 
There were 3,803 state banks, with a capital of $214,000,000; their deposits 
Avere $1,480,000,000. There Avere twenty-six savings banks, Avith $4,000,000 
capital, $43,500,000 deposits. Savings banks without capital, 625; depos¬ 
its, $950,200,000; being a total number of banks of 7,448, with a capital 
stock of $717,300,000; deposits, $2,902,300,000. This shows that there was 
due depositors three times their capital stock, or that there Avas due 
depositors double the Avhole volume of money in the Avhole country. I 
am asked Iioav this is possible, I answer, the same money is deposited 



23 


over and over. But good banking requires twenty-five per cent, of all 
amounts due depositors to be kept in the bank vaults. This in 1888 
was 3725,000,OCX), which leaves but a small amount in actual circulation, 
if the banks are doing a sound business. As early as 1878 the volume of 
moimy had shrunk over one-half, leaving this country on the verge of 
bankruptcy and ruin. We also find that this is only a repetition of his¬ 
tory. This is the natural effect of a shrinkage in the volume of money. 
“At the beginning of the Christian era,we find the metallic money of the 
Roman Empire amounted to 31 , 800 , 01 ) 0 . 000 . By the end of the fifteenth 
century it had shrunk to less than 3200,000,000. During this period a 
most extraordinary and baleful change took place in the condition of the 
world. Population dwindled, and commerce, arts, wealth, and freedom 
all disappeared. The people were reduced by poverty and misery to the 
most degraded conditions of serfdom and slavery. The disintegration of 
society was almost complete. The conditions of life were so hard that 
individual selfishness was the only thing consistent with the instinct of 
self-preservation. All public spirit, all generous emotions, all the nobler 
aspirations of man, shrivelled and disappeared as the volume of money 
shrank and as prices fell. History records no such disastrous transition 
as that from the Roman Empire to the Dark Ages. Various explana¬ 
tions have been given of this entire breaking down of the frame-work of 
society, but it was certainly coincident with a shrinkage in the volume of 
money, which was also without historical parallel. The crumbling insti- 
stitutions kept even step and pace with the shrinkage in the stock of 
money and the falling of prices. All other attendant circumstances than 
these last have occurred in other historical periods, unaccompanied and 
unfollowed by any such mighty disasters. It is a suggestive coincidence 
that the first glimmer of light only came with the invention of bills of 
exchange and paper substitutes, through which the scanty stock of the 
precious metals was increased in efficiency.” 

JLn 1878 the shrinkage in the volume of money filled this country with 
tramps, and history is repeating itself. Crime in 1878 was increasing at 
a terrible rate. Speaking of the tramps at that time, the following are 
quotations from the good, law-abiding papers and citizens of that period. 
The Chicago Times said: “Hand grenades should be thrown among those 
who are striving to obtain higher wages, as by such treatment they will 
be taught a valuable lesson, and other strikers would take warning by 
their fate.” Scribner’s Monthly made use of this language: “He (the 
tramp) has no right but that which society may see fit for its grace to 
bestow upon him. He has no more rights than the sow that wallows in 
the gutter, or the lost dog that hovers around the city square.” The 
Cincinnati Commercial said: “One wonders why Matthews wanted to 
bother himself about the eight-hour theory: Should government em¬ 
ployes be raised to the rank of favorites, and classified for pampering at 
the public treasury?” The ]STew York Independent said: “We would 
recommend the farmers to take the law into their own hands, and or¬ 
ganize themselves into vigilance committees, and turn sharp-shooters, 
ancl bring down at least one of these bread or blood gentry at every fire.” 
The New York Times said: “There seems to be but one remedy, and it 
must come by a change of ownership of the soil, and a creation of a class 
of land-owners on the one hand, and of tenant farmers on the other — 
something similar to what has long existed in the old countries of Eu¬ 
rope.” Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, in a discourse delivered in his church 
in Brooklyn, said: “Is not a dollar a day enough to buy bread? Water 
costs nothing, and a man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to 
live. A family may live, laugh, love, and be happy, that eats bread in the 
morning with good water, and water and good bread at noon, and water 
and bread at night.” The Chicago Tribune said: “The simplest plan, 
probably, when one is not a member of the humane society, is to put a 


little strychnine or arsenic in the meat or other supplies furnished tramps. 
This produces death within a comparatively short time, is a warning to 
other tramps, and puts the coroner in a good humor.” If law-abiding 
citizens can give such advice as the above, what can we expect from the 
people w r ho are made to suiter from the ills of a shrinkage in the volume 
of currency. David Hume, who was one of the greatest political econo¬ 
mists of the age, said one hundred and forty years ago: ‘'The volume of 
money in the country, other things being equal, regulates prices, regu¬ 
lates labor and all the productions of labor.” If the volume of money 
is large, no matter whether it is gold, silver, or paper, as in 1866-7, prices 
will be higher, labor will be sought after, and the price of labor will rise. 
If we shrink the volume of money as we did in 1878 or at present, we 
stagnate business and paralyze the industries. Dr. Wvland, a writer of 
the old school, in his Elements of Political Economy, says: “We cannot 
too often reiterate, nor too strongly emphasize, the fundamental 
principle that industry is limited to capital, and every increase 
of capital demands an increase of labor. When the number of 
laborers is great and the amount of capital is small, there will be a 
competition of laborers for work. This tends at once to reduce the 
rate of wages, and some will fail to obtain employment and others 
receive barely enough to evade starvation. There is consequently great 
distress, general discontent, and often violent insurrections, which 
aggravate the whole difficulty. On the contrary, when the number 
of laborers is small and the amount of capital great, there will be 
competition among capitalists for labor, and the wages or price of 
labor will rise.” Professor Walker, another writer of the old school, in 
his work called “The Science of Wealth,” says: “Capital should at least 
increase in a degree corresponding to the increase of population. If it 
does not labor is crippled, wages fall, and starvation eventually ensues, 
Ireland may be quoted as an illustration. Her soil was wrested from 
the people by conquest at different periods, from the reign of Henry II 
to the battle of the Boyne; has passed into the hands of foreigners, who 
draw away annually all her surplus products. Population increases from 
year to year, but capital does not increase correspondingly. Nay, even 
the waste of the soil and of implements is not fully and honestly supplied. 
What is the necessary consequence V Increasing poverty and ultimate 
starvation or emigration. We have said that capital is formed from the 
annual savings of labor. Twenty-five million dollars a year goes from 
Ireland to absentee landlords, and $40,000,000 are taken away every year 
in taxes. The Irish people can make no savings; there can be no in¬ 
crease of capital; starvation or emigration is their inevitable fate. From 
9,000,000 before the famine of 1846, the population fell rapidly to a little 
over 4,000,000. At this time the equilibrium was so far restored that 
wages rose to a rate sufficient to secure to the laborer a decent subsist¬ 
ence.” What a picture! Instead of increasing the volume of money to 
meet the necessities of 9,000,000 of people, they reduced population by 
starvation and emigration to 4,000,000, to make it correspond to the vol¬ 
ume of money in the country—reducing the Irish people to serfdom. 
History is repeating itself in this country. President Grant said in his 
message to Congress, December 2d, 1873: “To increase our exports, suffi¬ 
cient currency is required to keep all the industries of the country em¬ 
ployed. Without this, national as well as individual bankruptcy must 
ensue” In 1878 we partially remonetized silver, and stopped the destruc¬ 
tion of the treasury notes, which, to some extent, restored prosperity. 
But since then we have increased in population to 64,000,000, but we have 
only about half the money we had in 1866, and are wondering at the 
hard times. There is no excuse for this. The people of this nation have 
a mortgage debt of over $12,000,000,000. Without an increase, and a great 
increase, in the volume of money, this debt can never be paid. “If this 


25 


debt cannot be paid,” I hear you ask, “wliat then?” I cannot answer 
this question. 1 know, or think I know, what God would do if left to 
linn. In the eleventh chapter of Exodus it is related that “The Lord 
spake unto Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel and tell every 
man to borrow of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor, jewels 
of silver and jewels of gold; and God said He would soften the hearts of 
the Egyptians so they would loan them what they wanted.” In the next 
chapter it is related that Moses did as the Lord told him, and the chil¬ 
dren of Israel did as Moses told them; they borrowed jewels of silver and 
jewels of gold, borrowed raiment; they spoiled the Egyptians, that is, 
borrowed all they had; and 600,000 men, besides children, left Egypt the 
same night. The Lord led them in a cloud by day and a pillar of lire by 
night. When God and Moses were helping to negotiate this loan, they 
knew that not a dollar was to be paid back. Had some of our senators 
been there they would have called the Lord a lunatic and Moses a 
repudiator. The only explanation I have ever heard made of this trans¬ 
action, and the only one that can be made, is, that this property belonged 
to the Israelites, was produced by their labor, and God took this plan to 
restore to them what in justice belonged to them. 1 accept the explana¬ 
tion. Now let me ask who produced the wealth of this nation? Take 
my advice, and do not wait for God to restore to the people of this coun¬ 
try what in justice belongs to them. We might not like the way or the 
results if we, too, were swallowed up in the Red Sea — a sea of blood, per¬ 
haps. Let me tell you, if that contest ever comes between capital and 
labor in this country, that God and Moses will be found on the side of 
the laboring people now as they were then. God always was on the side 
of the poor—of the laboring masses. When the Lord chose his twelve 
apostles there was not a banker, a merchant, a lawyer, or a money loaner in 
the whole lot. 

We have another incident. When Nehemiah, the prophet, went to 
Jerusalem from Babylon to rebuild the walls, he relates: 

“And there was a great, cry of the people, and of their wives, against their brethren 
the Jews. 

“ For there were that said, We, our sons and our daughters, are many; therefore, we 
take up corn for them, that we may eat and live. 

“ Some also there were that said, We have mortgaged our lands, vineyards and houses 
that we might buy corn, because of the dearth. 

“ There were also that said, We have borrowed money for the king’s tribute, and that 
upon our lands and vineyards. 

“ Yet now, our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children; and 
lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of our 
daughters are brought unto bondage already; neither is it in our power to redeem them, 
for other men have our lands and vineyards/’ 

The good Nehemiah then says: 

“And I was very angry when I heard their cry and these words. 

“ Then I consulted with myself, [he did not go and consult Wall street,] and I rebuked 
the nobles and the rulers, and said unto them, Ye exact usury, every one of his brethren, 
and I set a great assembly against them, [stirred the people up as it were]. 

“Then I said, it is not good that ye do; ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God 
because of the reproach of the heathen, our enemies. 

“ Restore, 1 pray you, to them even this day their lands, their vineyards, and their 
houses.” 

And they did it. The stroke of a pen wiped them all out. Some of our 
senators ought to ha ve been there to have reminded Nehemiah that he was 
an anarchist, that he was destroying the credit of the Jews, and driving 
capital out of Jerusalem. I am not advising the wiping out of this mort¬ 
gage debt as Nehemiah, commissioned by God, wiped it out in Jerusa¬ 
lem. I am not advising a settlement as made by the Israelites when they 
left Egypt. I am only relating what took place under the directions and 
sanctioned by Jehovah. The people of this country are not repudiators. 
They want to pay, not repudiate, but they must have the means. What 
this country needs, what the people must have, is money that will pay 
debts. The more money in circulation the easier it is to do this. In 1858 


-JC 


26 


we were digging out of our mines over $70,000,000 of gold and silver an¬ 
nually; to-day, with double the population, we are producing less gold 
and silver. Yet the treasury notes, or so-called greenback money, has 
been reduced since 1868 over $150,000,000. The national bank circulation 
has been contracted over $300,000,000, with $800,000,000 idle in the treas¬ 
ury. With these facts before us we are still wondering what is the cause 
of the hard times, and asking ourselves when times will be better. That 
we can no longer depend upon gold and silver as money must be appar¬ 
ent to all. The superintendent of the mint estimates, or rather states, 
the amount of gold in the world at $3,727,018,869; silver, $3,826,571,346; 
total of both metals, $7,547,590,215. As there is not gold and silver 
enough in the whole world, if we had it all, to pay the mortgage debts of 
this country, what is to take the place of gold and silver as money is the 
great question of the day This raises the question of what is money, 
its functions, its use, and its value? Aristottle, writing of money, said: 
“Money by itself has value only by law, and not by nature; so that a 
change of convention between those who use it is sufficient to deprive it 
of all its value and power to satisfy all our wants. But with regard to a 
future exchange (if we want nothing at present) money is, as it were, 
our security that it may take place when we do want something.” John 
Locke, in “Considerations Regarding Money,” published in 1691, says: 
“Mankind, having covenanted to put an imaginary value upon gold and 
silver, by reason of their durableness and scarcity, and not being very 
liable to be counterfeited, have made them, by general consent, the com¬ 
mon pledges whereby men are assured, in exchange for them, to receive 
equally valuable things to those they parted with, for any quantity of 
those metals; by which means it comes to pass that the intrinsic value 
regarding those metals, made the common barter, is nothing but the 
quantity which men give or receive for them; they having, as money, no 
other value but as pledges to procure, what one wants or desires.” Bau- 
deau, reputed one of the most eminent of an early school of Trench econ¬ 
omists, says: “Coin money in circulation is nothing, as I have said 
elsewhere, but effective titles on a general mass or useful and agreeable 
enjoyment which cause the well-being and propagation of the human 
race. It is a kind of bill of exchange, or order payable at the will of the 
bearer.” Adam Smith says: “A guinea may be considered a bill for a 
certain quantity of necessaries and conveniences upon all the tradesmen 
in the neighborhood.” Jevons’ “Money Exchanges,” chapter 8, says: 
“ Those who use coins in ordinary business need never inquire how much 
metal they contain. Probably not one person in two thousand in this 
kingdom knows, or need know, that a sovereign should contain 123.27447 
grains of standard gold. Money is made to go. People want coin, not to 
keep in their own pockets, but to pass it off into their neighbors’ pockets.” 
Henry Thornton, in his work on “Paper Credit,” says: “Money of every 
kind is an order for goods. It is so considered by the laborer when he 
receives it, and it is almost instantly turned into money’s worth. It is 
merely the instrument by which the purchasable stock of the country is 
distributed with convenience and advantage among the several members 
of the community.” John Stuart Mill says: “The pounds or shillings 
which a person receives are a sort of a ticket or order which he can pre¬ 
sent for payment at any shop which he pleases, and which entitle him to 
receive a certain value of any commodity of which he makes choice.” 

Assuming the population to-day to be 65,000,000, and the ratio of its 
annual increase 3% per cent., the population of next year will be 67,166,- 
600. The percentage of monetary increase to be provided for that year 
should therefore be based on the increased number; and so on for 
each succeeding year. I have thought best to collect a variety of au¬ 
thority from the most distinguished men on financial economy, to sup¬ 
port my position, that “ the value of each dollar depends on the number 


27 


ot dollars m circulation.” John Locke, in his Considerations , published 
m lb JO, said: “Money, while the same quantity of it is passing up 
and down the kingdom in trade, is really a standing measure of 
the tailing and rising value of other things in reference to one 
another, and the alteration in price is true in them only. But if you 
increase or lessen the quantity of money current in traffic in any 
place, then the alteration of value is in the money. The value of money 
in any one country is the present quantity of the current money in that 
country, in proportion to the present trade.” The historian Hume says: 
“It is not difficult to perceive that it is the total quantity of the money 
in circulation in the country which determines what proportion of that 
quantity shall exchange for a certain portion of the goods or commodi¬ 
ties of that country. It is the proportion between the circulating money 
and the commodities in the market which determines the price.” Fitch 
says: “The amount of money current in a state represents everything 
that is purchasable on the surface of the state. If the quantity of pur¬ 
chasable articles increases, while the quantity of money remains the 
same, the value of money increases in the same ratio. If the quantity 
of money increases, while the quantity of purchasable articles remains 
the same, the value of money decreases in the same ratio.” James Mills, 
in his “Treatise on Political Economy,” says: “And again, in whatever 
degree, therefore, the quantity of money is increased or diminished, other 
things remaining the same, in that same proportion the value of the 
whole, and of every part, is reciprocally increased or diminished.” John 
Stuart Mill, “Political Economy,” says: “The value of money, other 
things being the same, varies inversely as its quantity; every increase of 
quantity lowering the value, every diminution raising in a ratio exactly 
equivalent. Alterations in the cost of the production of the precious 
metals do not act upon the value of money, except just in proportion as 
they increase or diminish its quantity.” Ricardo, “Reply to Bosanquet,” 
says: “The value of money in any country is determined by the amount 
existing. Commodities would rise or fall in price in proportion to the 
increase or diminution of money; I assume, as a fact, that it is incontro¬ 
vertible. There can exist no depreciation in money but from excess. 
However debased a coin by age may become, it will preserve its mint 
value; that is to say, it will pass in circulation for the intrinsic value of 
the bullion which it ought to contain, provided it be not in too great 
abundance.” In this case, Ricardo’s is the supposed case of a country 
actually using one million gold pieces containing one hundred grains. 
Sir James Graham says: “ The value of money is in the inverse ratio of its 
quantity, the supply of commodities remaining the same.” 'Torrens, in his 
work on “Political Economy,” says: “Gold is a commodity governed 
by the law of supply and demand. If the value of all other commodi¬ 
ties in relation to gold rises and falls as their quantities increase or 
diminish in relation to the commodities, gold must rise and fall as its quan¬ 
tity is diminished or increased.” AVoloski says: “The sum total of the 
precious metals is reckoned at fifty milliards, one-half gold and one-half 
silver. If by a stroke of the pen they suppress one of these metals in 
the monitary service, they double the demand for the other metal, to the 
ruin of all debtors.” Sernuschi says: “The purchasing power of money 
is in direct proportion to the volume of money existing.” Professor 
Francis A. Walker, in his work on “Money,” page 57, says: “The value 
of money in any country is determined by the amount existing. Its 
(money’s) power of acquisition depends not on its substance but on its 
quantity.” Prof. He Colonge, in the American Cyclopaedia of Com¬ 
merce, article on “Money,” says: “The rate at which money exchanges 
for other things is determined by its quantity. Supposing the amount of 
trade and the mode of circulation to remain stationary, if the quantity 
of money be increased its value will fall and the price of other commo- 


28 


dities will proportionally rise, as the latter will then exchange against a 
greater amount of money; if on the other hand the quantity of money 
be reduced, its value will be raised and prices in a corresponding degree 
diminished, as commodities will then have to be exchanged for a less 
amount of money. In whatever degree, therefore, the quantity of money 
is increased or diminished, other things remaining the same, in that same 
proportion the value of the whole and of every part is reciprocally di¬ 
minished or increased.” A curtailment of the volume of money in any 
country will increase the value of money of that country. All the au¬ 
thorities agree that this law applies to all forms of money, whatever the 
material; so that it applies to paper money with precisely the same force 
that it applies to metallic money. Mr. Samuel Jevons, in his work on 
“Money and the Mechanism of Exchange,” says; “There is plenty of 
evidence to prove that an incontrovertible paper money, if carefully 
limited in quantity, can retain its full value. Such was the case with the 
Bank of England notes for several years after the suspension of specie 
payments in 1797, and such is the case with the present notes of the Bank 
of France. Mr. Gallatin said: “ If in a country which wants and possesses 
a metallic currency of $70,000,000, a paper currency to the same amount 
should be substituted, the $70,000,000 in gold or silver being no longer 
wanted for that purpose, exported and the returns converted into a pro¬ 
ductive capital, would add an equal amount to the wealth of the country.” 
In his “ Proposal for an Economic and Secure Currency,” he says: “A well- 
regulated paper currency is so great an improvement in commerce that 
I should greatly regret if prejudice should induce us to return to a sys¬ 
tem of less utility. The introduction of the precious metals for the 
purposes of money may with truth be considered as one of the most 
important steps toward the improvement of commerce and the arts of 
civilized life; but it is no less true that with the advancement of knowl¬ 
edge and science, we discover that it would be another improvement to 
banish them again from the employment to which, during a less en¬ 
lightened period, they had been so advantageously applied.” Mr. J. B. 
McCulloch, in commenting on the principles of money laid down by 
Ricardo, says: “ He examined the circumstances which determine the 
value of money, and he showed that its value will depend on the extent 
to which it may be issued compared with the demand. This is a prin¬ 
ciple of great importance; for it shows that intrinsic worth is not neces¬ 
sary to a- currency, and that, provided the supply of paper notes declared 
to be legal tender be sufficiently limited, their value may be maintained 
on a par with the value of gold or raised to any higher level. If, there¬ 
fore, it were practicable to devise a plan for preserving the value of 
paper on a level with that of gold without making it convertible into 
coin at the pleasure of the holder, the heavy expense of a metallic cur¬ 
rency would be saved. It appears, therefore, that if there were perfect 
security that the power of issuing paper money would not be abused; 
that is, if there were perfect security for its being issued in such quan¬ 
tities as to preserve its value relatively to the mass of circulating com¬ 
modities nearly equal, the precious metals might be dispensed with, not 
only as a circulating medium, but also as a standard to which to refer the 
value of paper.” “ in adopting a paper circulation,” says Lord Over¬ 
stone, “we must unavoidably depend for a maintenance of its due value 
upon the adoption of a strict and judicious rule for the regulation of its 
amount.” Lord Overstone further declared that “ the value of the paper 
currency results from its being kept at the same amount the metallic 
currency would have been.” Alexander Baring, in his evidence before 
the secret committee of the House of Lords in 1819, said: “The reduc¬ 
tion of paper money would produce all those effects which arise from the 
reduction in the amount of money in any country.” Prof. F. A. Walker 
says: “Let me repeat,money is to be known by its doing a certain work. 


29 


Money is not gold, though gold may be money, and sometimes it is not. 
Money is not one thing, no group of many things having any material 
property in common. On the contrary, anything may be money; and 
anything in a given time and place is money which then and there per¬ 
forms a certain function. Always and everywhere that which does the 
money work is the money thing.” Sir Archibald Allison says: “The 
suspension of specie payment in 1797, making bank notes a legal tender 
receivable for taxes, by providing Great Britain with an adequate inter¬ 
nal currency, averted the catastrophe then so general upon the Continent 
and gave it at the same time an extraordinary degree of prosperity. 
Such was the commencement of the paper system in Great Britain, 
which ultimately produced such astonishing effects and brought the 
struggle (of the Napoleonic wars) to a triumphant close.” 

“ The true money standard of any country is not the material of which 
the money is made. The standard is not a concrete object, but a numer¬ 
ical relation. It is the relation between the number of units composing 
the monetary circulation of the country and the numbers of its popula¬ 
tion. It is the legal-tender function that constitutes money.” 

The United States Supreme Court has decided that Congress may pro¬ 
vide for a national issue of paper money, based on the credit of the 
Government, making it a legal tender, or that greenbacks may be issued 
as needed in peace as well as war. The sovereign power to make money 
should never be delegated to corporations. Why not wipe out our national 
banks, and prohibit state banks of issue. We want no wildcat money. 
President Thomas Jefferson, one of the greatest of American statesmen, 
said, in a letter to Colonel Epps, his son-in-law: “Bank paper must be 
suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation 
to whom it belongs. Let banks continue if they please, but let them dis¬ 
count for cash or loan treasury notes.” President Madison, in his mes¬ 
sage, January 20, 1813, said: “It may be necessary to ascertain the terms 
upon which the notes of the Government (no longer required as an in¬ 
strument of credit) shall be issued upon motives of general policy as a 
common medium.” And again, December 3, 1816, he said; “But for the 
interests of the community at large, as well as for the purposes of the 
treasury, it is essential that the nation should possess a currency of equal 
value, credit and use wherever it may circulate. The Constitution has 
intrusted Congress exclusively with the power of creating and regulat¬ 
ing a currency of that description.” President Jackson said, in 1835, in 
his message vetoing the United States bank bill: “But if they (Congress) 
have the power to regulate the currency, it was conferred to be exercised 
by themselves, and not to be transferred to a corporation. If the bank 
be established for that purpose, with a charter unalterable, without its 
consent, Congress has parted with their power for a term of years, dur¬ 
ing which the Constitution is a dead letter. It is neither necessary nor 
proper to transfer its legislative powers to such a bank, and therefore 
unconstitutional.” Hon. John C. Calhoun said in the United States Sen¬ 
ate in 1837: “It is, then, my impression, that in the present condition of 
the world a paper currency in some form is almost indispensable in 
financial and commercial operations of civilized and extensive commu¬ 
nities. In many respects it has a vast superiority over metallic currency, 
especially in great and extensive transactions, on account of its greater 
cheapness, lightness, and the facility of determining its amount. No one 
can doubt that the Government credit is better than any bank, more reli¬ 
able, more safe. Why, then, should it mix up with the less perfect credit 
of those institutions ? And why should the community be compelled to 
give six per cent, discount for the Government credit, blended with that 
of the bank, when the superior credit of the Government could be fur¬ 
nished separately, without discount, to the mutual advantage of the 
Government and the community? It has another and striking advan- 


30 


tage over bank circulation in its superiority and cheapness, as well as 
greater stability.” 

Bank paper is cheap to those who make it, but dear, very dear, to 
those who use it; fully as much as gold and silver. It is the little 
cost of its manufacture, and the dear rates at which it is furnished 
to the community, which gives the great profit to those who have a 
monopoly of the article. On the other hand, the credit of the Govern¬ 
ment, while it would greatly facilitate its financial operations, would cost 
nothing, or next to nothing, both to it and the people, and of course 
would add nothing to the cost of production; which would give to every 
branch of industry, agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, as far as 
circulation might extend, great advantages, both at home and abroad. 

“ I now undertake to affirm positively, without the least fear that I can 
be answered, what heretofore I have but suggested, that a paper issued by 
the Government, with the simple promise to receive it in all dues, would 
form a perfect paper circulation which could not be abused by the Gov¬ 
ernment, that would he as steady and uniform in value as the metals 
themselves. I will be able to prove that it is within the constitutional 
power of Congress to use such a paper in the management of its finances, 
according to the most rigid construction of the Constitution.” Thomas 
H. Benton was right when he got up in the United States Senate, pend¬ 
ing the discussion on the United States bank, and declared ‘‘the Gov¬ 
ernment ought not to delegate this power if it could. It was too great a 
power to be trusted to any banking company whatever, or to any author¬ 
ity but the highest and most responsible which was known to our form 
of government. The Government itself ceases to be independent when 
the national currency is at the will of a company. The Government can 
undertake no great enterprise, either of war or peace, without the con¬ 
sent and co-operation of that company, its friendship or its enmity, its 
concurrence or opposition; to see how far that company will permit 
money to be scarce or to be plentiful, how far it will suit the interest or 
policy of that company to create a tempest or suffer a calm in the money 
ocean. The people are not safe when such a company has such powder. 
The temptation is too great; the opportunity too easy to put up and to 
put down prices; to make and break fortunes; to bring the whole com¬ 
munity upon its knees to the Neptunes who preside over the flux and 
reflux of paper. All property is at their mercy. The price off real estate, 
of every growing crop, of every staple article in the market, is at their 
command. Stocks are their playthings — their gambling theater, on 
which they gamble daily, with as little secrecy and as little modesty ancl 
far more mischief to fortunes than common gamblers carry on their oper¬ 
ations.” Dr. Franklin said: “ Gold and silver are not intrinsically of equal 
value with iron, a metal in itself capable of many more benefits to man¬ 
kind.” President Grant said, in his annual message to Congress, in 1873: 
“ The experience of the present panic has proven that the currency of 
the country, based as it is on the credit of the country, is the best that 
has ever been devised.” It had a base that could not go to Europe; that 
would stand by us in adversity as well as in prosperity, war as well as 
peace. 

A nation with sixty-four millions of people and sixty-two billions of 
property, with power to coin money, should never borrow money or issue 
bonds. We now have seven hundred and fifty-one millions idle in the 
treasury, a sum four times as large as the whole national bank circula¬ 
tion, and every business interest of the country'is suffering. Money or 
capital should not be allowed to fund itself into Government bonds, or 
lie idle and accumulate in interest. Our national debt should be paid, not 
funded. If capitalists who now hold our bonds had the money, and that 
money could not accumulate until it went to work, we would find it 
everywhere hunting something to do; labor would be in demand, and the 



31 


price of labor come up. You have not forgotten that our greatest pros¬ 
perity, as a people, was in 1866 and 1867, when we had no idle men or 
women. Labor was amply rewarded, yet not a dollar in gold and silver 
was in circulation in this country, or a dollar based on gold or silver. 
The wlxole circulation of over two thousand millions of dollars was based 
upon the credit of this great nation of ours. The people not only pros¬ 
pered, but civilization took a step higher and in advance. It must not 
be forgotten that hard times came with what was falsely called resump¬ 
tion; when we got down to a solid basis, i. e., hard money, and but little 
of it, resulting in hard times and the country full of it. You know all 
political science teaches that when the volume of money is small and 
prices are coming down, the demand for labor gets scarce; that there is 
no market for what we raise; that men are unable to pay their debts, and 
individual bankruptcy and ruin follows, and the property of the country 
rapidly changes hands at forced sales; labor is idle, and crime increases. 
In a government like ours, the military should be kept in strict subordi¬ 
nation to civil power. We must not forget that in our Constitution it is 
provided that all powers not delegated to Congress are reserved to the 
states, or the people of the states respectively; that Congress has no 
power under the Constitution to interfere with or control the domestic 
institutions of the several states, and that all such states are the sole and 
proper judges of everything appertaining to their affairs not limited by 
the Constitution. Yet we want a government that is strong enough to 
protect every citizen; one that will see justice meted out to the rich and 
poor alike; one that will make the same effort to secure a fair trial for 
the naturalized Irishman in Ireland as the aristocratic murderer in Lon¬ 
don; one, if necessary, that can reach its long arm into Kilmainliam jail 
and secure the release or a fair trial of the lowest of our citizens, whether 
by birth or adoption, one that will secure respect to the American citizen 
the world over; one that will be respected in Italy or in Lisbon. We 
want a government of the people, by the people, for the people. I 
do n’t believe in any toadyism to the aristocracy of this country, or of the 
old world. We want an aristocracy of labor rather than one of capital. 

This Government should also own and operate the telegraph, tele¬ 
phone and railroad lines. The transmission of freight, passengers, and 
intelligence, should not be at the mercy of corporations. The Govern¬ 
ment thought so when it provided the post-office department, the only 
source of news and information at that time. Congress has become an 
association of stock jobbers. A man goes there as a Republican or a 
Democrat; the party lines are drawn, and he is whipped into the traces 
and loses individuality. Men are called demagogues because they hear 
and heed the murmurings of the laboring masses. We must substitute 
Government legal-tender paper for national bank issues. We must over¬ 
throw corruption at the polls and in representative bodies. We must 
secure the greatest good for the many rather than the few. We must 
protect and build up labor rather than capital. We must grant no spe¬ 
cial privileges to corporations that we do not grant to the whole people. 
We must secure a free ballot and a fair count; no bulldozing the labor¬ 
ing man’s vote, South or North. We must control by law and bring into 
subjection to the interest of the people all corporations and monopolies 
that have by combination and extortion established absolute dominion 
over money, over transportation, over invention, over land and labor, 
and over prices. The trusts must be wiped out. All railroad grants not 
earned by the roads should be restored to the public domain, and made 
subject to homestead entry. When a man accepts a public office, and 
the people pay him a salary, his time and his energies belong to his con¬ 
stituents and not to himself, and he should seek the highest possible 
public good. We must adhere more closely to the teachings of the fath¬ 
ers. The place to right all political wrongs in a republican government 


32 


is at the ballot-box. There is no excuse for labor riots or bloodshed or 
rebellion in a republican government. We would not have these if we 
taught, and as we must teach, our boys and girls more respect for the bal¬ 
lot and the lessons it teaches. We must study all economic and political 
questions from a non-partisan standpoint. This is the science of govern¬ 
ment. We must study this mortgage debt hanging over our country. 
It is sweeping away the entire property of the people. It is a worse 
calamity than the Johnstown flood or the overflow of the Mississippi. 
The Government was liberal in its donations to the Johnstown sufferers 
and to the people along the Mississippi. The Government loaned the 
Union Pacific railroad sixty millions to aid in building that road. The 
Government for thirty years has been loaning the national banks 
hundreds of millions at one-half of one per cent, interest This was all 
constitutional. Whenever there is a will there will be found a way to 
help the mortgage-ridden people. Suppose we increase the volume of 
money to ten per cent, on the value of property of the country as shown 
by the last census. Will any one say that money based on ten times its 
volume in property would not be safe. This would be $6,200,000,000. 
With this issue of money every idle man and woman would then find 
employment at good wages. The prices <of agricultural productions 
would also increase, enabling the people to pay their debts. Then abol¬ 
ish debts or the power to contract them, and interest. Devise some plan 
by which the Government can loan money directly to the people at a 
nominal rate of interest to pay this great mortgage debt. For instance, 
the mortgage debt of Kansas, including chattel mortgages, is over $200,- 
000,000; this at seven per cent, requires $14,000,000 a year that goes out of 
our state to pay interest. In thirty-six years this will be $420,000,000. 
Suppose the Government should assume this mortgage debt as it becomes 
due; issue for this purpose legal-tender treasury notes, loan them to 
the people at one per cent.; the Government would then receive in inter¬ 
est at one per cent, $2,000,000 a year, or $60,000,000 in thirty years. The 
people of Kansas would save $12,000,000 a year, or $360,000,000 in thirty 
years. This w T ould be not only saved to the state, but each family could 
add that much annually to their comfort and happiness. I believe with 
$500,000,000 increased volume of money this could be done. If the Gov¬ 
ernment should assume the whole $12,000,000,000 of mortgage debt of the 
whole country as it becomes due, it would probably require an issue of 
$3,000,000,000 of money, as it would be used over and over again. This 
would only increase the volume of money to $4,500,000,000, a little over 
seven per cent, on our wealth. If the average interest on this great 
mortgage debt is seven per cent., the people are now paying $840,000,000 
a year in interest; this in thirty years would be $25,200,000,000, a sum al¬ 
most equal to one-half the wealth of the country, a sum in excess ol the 
entire taxable property of the country. This is why I say, with our pres¬ 
ent financial policy, it can never be paid. If the Government should as¬ 
sume this debt at one per cent., it would be $140,000,000 a year paid the 
Government; in thirty years, $4,200,000,000. The people would save $720,- 
000,000 a year; this in thirty years would be $22,600,000,000. This money 
kept at home among the people would stimulate every industry; every 
idle man and woman would go to work, and civilization would take a 
step in advance. Of course the people must not be allowed to make new 
debts or new obligations. In fact, we must then abolish debts, with all 
laws for the collection of debts contracted in the future. Mortgages on 
the homes at least should be void. Abolish usury or interest. With 
this, selfishness would be of the past. Crime, insanity, and vice, induced 
by poverty, would disappear. 

I have thus briefly suggested a remedy. If there is a better one, I am 
for it. Thanking you for your attention, I bid you good-night. 












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